[shadowsun7]

I don't get this meme. Innovation can happen anywhere - and in fact it often does regardless of how seemingly 'useless' the application is. Livejournal is 'boring', but out of it we got Memcached; Facebook is a 'PHP doodad' (actual news article called it that, I kid you not!); out of it we got HipHop and Cassandra and Thrift. Friendfeed is a 'frivolous social app', and out of it we got Tornado.

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.” Sound true at face-value. But guess what? In order to process the huge amounts of data necessary to 'make people click ads', we use map/reduce, and we get and/or improve Hadoop. Both of which may then be used for other Big Data applications.

Sure, web applications seem trivial. But the innovations created as an aside to them very often are not.

[BenSS]

When I think 'innovation' I'm generally not even thinking about web applications - but you've got some great examples!

I think of more physical projects like RepRap (reprap.org) OpenFarmTech and SpaceX that are really pushing things in a new way. I'm sure there's plenty more if people look for them outside the software space.

[FrojoS]

+++

[david927]

All of these are hacks. Interesting and useful, but hacks. None of these will be around in ten years. It's not the kind of future-inspiring innovation the author was referring to.

Web applications don't seem trivial -- they are trivial. Scaling them means being creative, but don't confuse that with true innovation.

[shadowsun7]

Don't be so quick to dismiss 'hacks'. Important innovations often start out in unrelated fields, or build on discoveries or solutions attempted in unrelated fields. We don't have to look too far for evidence of this: the Internet, the laser, and the computer were all important inventions that changed the world in ways its creators never intended them for.

I'd argue that innovation happens in widespread tinkering. So it could be true that most of the tinkering today happens to be on webapps. But it's presumptuous to assume that none of these attempts would result in innovations of significant worth to humanity.

[scott_s]

I say this without irony: I think that Facebook changes everything. If Facebook is not around in 10 years, then at least one social networking site will be. People want to be able to easily communicate online with the people they know in a global way. Facebook is becoming the global human database.

[david927]

You're right that a global database, partially about us and our relationships (including a social network), is the future. Many are working on it, including me. And Facebook has some seed data for that, but that's the extent of it.

We'll remember Facebook in ten years the way we remember MySpace now: We don't. Facebook changes nothing.

[scott_s]

I can see the changes Facebook has made in how people communicate right now. This is not a prediction, I can observe it. I know people who no longer use email and exclusively use Facebook for online communication. They share vacation photos with their family and friend sthrough Facebook. They announce life-changing events through Facebook. I, personally, have maintained communication with people that normally I would have just stopped talking to. These are not hypotheticals. These are real, actual changes in how I and others communicate. Facebook has an order of magnitude more users than the previous attempts - Friendster and MySpace - and is able to have much more impact than them because of it.

If you're working in the same space as Facebook, you're not doing yourself any favors by denying its impact. One, it harms your perspective, and two, it harms your credibility.

[FrojoS]

I agree. Don't forget linkedin. I only signed up for Facebook two years, to linkedin and twitter a few weeks ago. They are all mind blogging.

[thorwed123]

Hadoop rather mapreduce came from Google which is a great innovation.

Cassandra came from Dynamo; And Dynamo is from Amazons R and D efforts. Btw Amazon is an innovation as it leads to large amount of savings in energy.

Thrift,Tornado,HipHop -> not innovations useful programming tools but not gonna change anything.

Rarely any innovations have come out of Web Applications. In fact the best innovation in data mining [The correct term for Big Data], have come from Universities or R&D efforts of IBM/MSFT/Google/IBM/Amazon.

[william42]

Are you seriously saying that Google and Amazon aren't web application companies?

[aphexairlines]

Amazon is of the web, but it has a big impact dependencies on the physical world as an enormous retail & logistics operation.

[FrojoS]

Sure! The Kindle for instance is one of the greatest pieces of hardware I ever owned.

[rhc2104]

The Open Compute Project produced a data center with a PUE of 1.07, making it far more energy efficient.

Disclaimer: I work for Facebook.