Over the past few days and weeks I’ve been doing a lot of stuff with what I’ve come to call the interactive web. Before I get into that, I think its necessary to give a little background on the subject.

In the beginning there was just the internet. One of the most popular, and certainly the most well know, aspects of the internet is the world wide web(Web 1.0). Web 1.0 consisted of largely generic websites that, even when dynamic, were not very interactive, there were bulletin boards in the Web 1.0 world, but they were not the main focal point of the experience. This period of time was very successful, but then a well known event occurred, the .com crash. Silicon Valley was in despair, but all was not lost. Web 2.0 then entered the scene, instead of focusing on people’s individual websites, Web 2.0 is all about sharing and collaboration. This sharing exists in primarily two forms, social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace where users share data about themselves and their habits(some are as limited as for instance BakeSpace a social network for people who enjoy cooking), and those where users share content they have created, sites such as Flickr for pictures and YouTube for videos dominate this segment of the Web 2.0 work(but smaller networks exists such as Flixster where users share movie ratings and reviews).

Beyond these social networks and user created content sharing services there exists a third aspect of Web 2.0. This final aspect involves sharing information that you have found through your travels on the Web. There are several ways in which this sharing occurs. The first way is the traditional way, when a user finds a website they find interesting they copy the URL and paste it to the IM window for their friend in their favourite chat program and that friend clicks on the link and is inundated with the content. This method is very Web 1.0, and so of course there has to be Web 2.0 alternatives. The first Web 2.0 alternative is blogs, blogs are the Web 2.0 equivalent of the personal webspace of the past(Geocities versus Blogger anyone?) but they do not allow for a great way to disseminate a ton of information unless you spam post on your blog, they are more for comment and reflection of interesting things and not on the sharing itself. The Web 2.0 alternative that tries to fill the niche of copy and pasting to friends are sites such as Digg, Reddit, and Del.icio.us. These sites allow users to share content that they find interesting with not only their friends, but with the world at large. The content is rated through popularity on most services and this is how most people on these services discover new and interesting things.

Most of the above information is fairly well known and understood, but is necessary to truly understand where the interactive web fits in. The interactive web exists at the intersection of the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 worlds(it should not be confused with Web 3.0, which is a different beast entirely, for a good overview of Web 3.0 see this article in PC Magazine).

The premise of the interactive web is simple. Sites such as Digg and Reddit are great if you want to browse a ton of content, and while they have internal comment systems, they don’t provide a great way to see what others think about the website you are visiting without actually returning to the Web 2.0 site.

It is within this context that the interactive web springs. The idea is simple. Allow people to interact with others who are viewing the same web space as them, while the user remains on that webspace. Also based on the type of website in which they are visiting, allow the user to interact with others who browse similar websites.

This idea is far from new, and has existed for as long as the world wide web, but with the prevalence of Web 2.0 and browser plugins, it has been able to take hold like never before. I’ve been using several of these plugins for a bit now, and each has a different approach to how to tackle the interactive web. They are all in early alpha/beta stages so will most likely improve with time, but here’s a brief overview of this exciting area of the interwebs.

The first is Others Online. Others Online is delivered through a browser plugin. It is unique in that it doesn’t actually show you the websites that others are visiting because of privacy concerns, instead it uses both user defined tags and your browsing habits to show you people who are local to your interests, you then have the option to interact with them based on this through either e-mail or IM. This site could therefore be considered the least interactive web method as it only serves as a matching service, and not as a content commenting service. Others Online is in public beta right now, but even regardless of that fact it does not seem to have many users, a fact that makes it far less effective as a matching service.

Here’s a screenshot of Others Online:

The second service is Me.dium. Me.dium is also delivered through a browser plugin. Me.dium always you to see the people who are not only browsing the same site as you, but also sites that are related to the site you are browsing(assuming that they allow themselves to be seen, one of the options is to only be seen by friends, and another is to not be seen at all). Me.dium allows you to start a conversation with everyone on the particular site. Sharing is always disabled in Me.dium when you enter a secure site. You can also see what sites your friends are currently visiting. A tutorial of Me.dium is available here.

A new site that has just entered private alpha is Bumpin. Bumpin is the most no-nonsense of the bunch. It allows you to comment on pages you are viewing through a broadcast window, as well as see who else is at your website, and a list of all the others users online(but not currently where they are browsing unless you chat with them). One of the best features of Bumpin is the ease in which one can minimize it while still having the plugin functional to allow the most of the browser window to be seen(by clicking the orange button visable in the screenshot below). It is still in early development having just entered private alpha, but of all the sites it looks to have the most promise to fill the interactive web niche of communication with people who are browsing the content you are browsing.

Here’s a screenshot of Bumpin:

An honorable mention goes to Clupedia. Clupedia allows you to comment on websites you visit but doesn’t have the benefit of not having to visit the mother site, making it much like Digg and the rest, but for more things that just digg.

Ultimately this is a promising area of development, but with some of these plugins out for months, and with not a ton of users for any of them, one has to wonder if something like this has a market. Social web interaction certainly has a place in the post-Web 2.0 world, but it is largely useless if it goes unused, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few months with this side of the web.

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