I attended Web 2.0 2009 here in San Francisco today.
Needless to say, it was a low key event compared to 2008. Total attendance, level of crowd, number of exhibitors and announcements all appeared subdued. Since I went all the way to the city, I put on a brave face and started covering the show.
I am sure there several other trends. However, one thing which I picked up was Web 2.0 and Social Networks are embracing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). This was apparent from two things.
Firstly, Adobe and FaceBook announced a Partnership. Adobe ActionScript 3 API has been made available for FaceBook. This will allow developers to deliver Rich social applications on the web using the Adobe Flash/Flex Platform. I attended the Adobe booth and indeed this was one of the key highlights with a FaceBook engineer showing off a Flex based game on Facebook. Looked really sleek! This was indeed interesting when I recalled that not too long ago (2007) Microsoft had bought a small piece of Facebook for $240M!
Well, wondering what the giant from Redmond was up to I went over to the Microsoft booth. No surprises, they were showing Windows 7, IE8, Azure and last but not the least SilverLight and ExpressionBlend. When asked about the Adobe and Facebook partnership, the presenter at the booth invited me to a joint session with MySpace later in the day.
I showed up for that session to learn that Microsoft has made a partnership with MySpace and developers can now use Silverlight to build rich media features into OpenSocial applications. The session had evangelists from both MySpace and Microsoft and they showed off the MySpace SilverLight SDK. The show was well attended and received. The key application shown was game to teach children on recycling and environment. Use of Expression Blend to develop RIA effects was very impressive!
Considering these two strong partnerships, I believe we will see a whole set of richer social applications in the near future.
Some links which may be helpful:
1. Adobe/FaceBook Partnership Details.
2. A Seminar to learn more about Adobe and Facebook.
3. Microsoft/MySpace partnership analysis
4. MySpace SilverLight SDK
Thursday, April 2, 2009
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