The Birth of "The Metaweb" -- The Next Big Thing -- What We are All Really Building

Originally developed at Netscape, a new technology called RSS has risen from the dead to ignite the next-evolution of the Net. RSS represents the first step in a major new paradigm shift -- the birth of "The Metaweb." The Metaweb is the next evolution of the Web -- a new layer of the Web in fact -- based on "microcontent." Microcontent is a new way to publish content that is more granular, modular and portable than traditional content such as files, Web pages, data records, etc. On the existing Web, information is typically published in large chunks -- "sites" comprised of "pages." In the coming microcontent-driven Metaweb, information will be published in discrete, semantically defined "postings" that can represent an entire site, a page, a part of a page, or an individual idea, picture, file, message, fact, opinion, note, data record, or comment. (A great diagram of Nova's Metaweb is now accessible here).