Web content, Easter eggs, and Russian dolls

In the old days of Web 1.0, companies and institutions used to create fixed structures to give all information to their audience. With the power of web 2.0 applications, content and processing have jumped from heavy desktop systems to the light flowing ever-changing web plataform. Either be 2D, 3D, touchscreen, or whatever way we keep developing to display and interact with information, content now is free to move and grow. Link it here, insert it there, email to a friend, save it to your bookmarks, RSS, and the endless possibilities of temporary and eventually forgotten containers are partitioning modern life into small electronic bits.



As a designer, the question now lies on how to manage all this and still be relevant to this world of so many authors. I think the answer is in looking at content as Easter eggs and Russian dolls. There is no need to find the homepage, the end, the middle, or set a strong structure. Content now has more flier miles than top international executives and it likes to be independent, homeless, and orphan.

As people exercise their freedom of expression, information is becoming more compatible with the human brain. Unfocused and with strange unexpected connections, human thought is being finally displayed in modules as they have always been living and behaving inside our heads.

Examples of that are widgets that you can insert inside aggregators.

Insert Basecamp inside iGoogle:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/control_basecamp_from_igoogle_with_the_periscope_gadget.php

Insert NetVibes inside Facebook:
http://mashable.com/2008/10/09/netvibes-facebook-2/

Learning how they will behave and what you will find inside might be just exciting and surprising as goodies you get in a gift basket.