I do not think the website is suddenly not open anymore. Everyone can still use it otherwise, but the majority of users simply want ease of use. And if Facebook, Twitter or whatever can provide that for them, so be it.

And on a personal note: Personally I do not care if Facebook, Google or Apple uses my data. I have nothing to hide. I give them access to it and if I do not want it … I just won’t make use of it. I still have the ability to make that choice don’t I?

It is rather disappointing to see such “disintermediating” innovations emerging from outside the U.S., perhaps attesting to the head in the sand denial on the part of US publishers and the stranglehold Amazon has over the industry.

And i was rather crazy for the publishers to have resorted to collusion for price-fixing and inviting the wrath of DoJ when the more effective approach would have to foster Publit-like platforms. Why bother with agency model, wholesale model etc. when all that is needed is a platform to host the content, manage DRM, process payment and advertise/promote etc. and receive realtime market intelligence as gravy.

Besides Publit-like platforms, the publishers and authors could establish their own collaborative eBook portal and simply pay commissions to sales coming from affiliate’s referral links from specialist book review sites similar to movie review sites Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes. And if only the industry promotes the development of generic, commodity e-reader devices using an open format like ePub and figure out a way to subsidize or pretty much give it away, it will liberate themselves and the readers from the walled gardens of Kindle and iBooks and shift the paradigm to “Content is King” rather that the yoke of “Platform is King” they squirm under.

As it ought to have been to begin with, hope the day will come soon when eBook distribution is done on a “Marketplace” model sponsored by neutral, non-competing platforms like Ebay, Facebook, Publit etc.

Like Windows, the Web has fallen into disrepair technologically because the principals involved thought they had a monopoly. The Web installs an app with a single click! Therefore all other app platforms will fail and only the Web will be left. Except then Apple created a consumer-focused version of the Mac app platform that installs with a single-click, yet still has the richness of native Cocoa app development.

In Cocoa, audio video is not exotic, and it is easy to implement. Same with typography, animation, input methods. In HTML5, it is still all a mess. HTML5 did not go far enough. It needed to be designed for consumers, not coders. Too late now.

Me, I started making websites in 1994 and wrote books about Web development starting in 1998. But today, I make iOS apps because it takes half as much work to make a twice as good app. The final straw for me was the disrespect shown to ISO MPEG audio video standardization (20 years of dramatic success) by people who were supposedly making “standardized” W3C HTML5 code. Fail. If you are building to standards. Every PC and mobile had a hardware MPEG video player in it, which Firefox and Opera block the Web app from using. Well, you reap what you sow. I make iOS apps now with ISO standard C code and ISO standard audio video and I’m happier, my users are happier.

“Open” does not excuse crap technology. You have to win on technology.