So I've been working on a new project - I finalized the 0.8 release (which most would call "beta" or "alpha" releases, except those phrases are dumb) last weekend and I've just been playing with it and talking to other people about it. There's this feeling for me that this is something original, so I'm a bit excited about it. (Credit goes to discussions I've held with Neeraj, Matt, Brian, Yush for solidifying my arguments on what I'm attempting to accomplish).

The current trend in websites is "user-generated content." All blogging, vlogging, podcasting, video-sharing sites remain the same: it's all about creating content. What's interesting is that blogging (and podcasting since it piggybacked off of blogging) started off in a distributed fashion and trended towards centralized services. Early bloggers learned tricky installation processes (remember CGI blogging tools, pre-Movable Type? Good god, they were atrocious), bought their own domains, and sat in virtual fiefdoms. Sites like TypePad and Wordpress attempt to lower the barrier to entry in creating content by simplfying the installation process (and to a certain degree, providing a simpler UI). This allowed a broader range of users to create and share content. (An aside: Due to compability and storage issues, videoblogging (or user-generated video sharing) went the other way: we're starting with a centralized location (YouTube) and vbloggers are starting to set up their own sites, BUT these sites are usually piggybacking off of a popular blogger/podcaster).

Creating sites that allow for user-generated content are so passe now. The next generation of important sites will be those that can effectively aggregate this content and create nodes of information that are of relevance to casual readers.

Lowering the barriers to content creation has created a virtual overload of information. When the web was smaller, sites like MeFi and Slashdot were able to aggregate and redistribute content; I remember when I could visit Slashdot and get nearly *all* relevant tech news for a given day. But as the web grew, these sites were largely relegated to focusing on a few articles a day; the information fiends like me transitioned to RSS aggregators to read sites and consume information. Sites like Digg and delicious, which relied on reader-editors have become the new way to discover and share information.

Not everybody in the world is a content creator; many people don't have the time to create a full website to aggregate information about a particular topic or contribute to a Wikipedia article on a topic, because it just takes too much time. And most of the time, a lot of these topics are so ephemeral that it's not worth capturing cause of the time required to blog/wikipedia it.

What I'm trying to do with Project Swarm is to allow for microaggregation by presenting information as something that is more easy for people to understand: the newspaper front page. Adding an item to your virtual front page takes about 20 seconds with a bookmarklet and doesn't interrupt your reading flow. You can drag items around and (soon) can style items differently - it's like bringing the power of creating Drudge Report to everybody. There is no barrier to creating the content or getting it approved. One of my metrics for success will be judging the actual time and amount of typing/clicking you have to do to add an item to a swarm and manage it.

So basically, low time commitment to participate and contribute in creating infonodes = the goal for Project Swarm.

P.S. I've un-privat-ized the swarmf category that has a bunch of posts I wrote while developing the site and idea.