Wednesday, November 07, 2007

XML is Not an Application Platform

A comment that Dave Winer made on Twitter about Open Social announcement from Google got me thinking about this the other day.  His tweet was:

I much prefer the Twitter API that doesn't force any religion on me beyond XML, which I agreed to use 10 years ago. 

What exactly did he agree to use it for (other than the obvious)?  XML has proven to be a great data structure, a great container for moving data around, and a fantastic sinkhole for misuse.  I'm sure we've all spent time on that bandwagon where everything needs to be XML.  I think Google has it right (except for the "Hey Look at Me" stunt with Open Social) to keep using Java script and HTML as the prime set of technologies for their application platforms.  Those two technologies tried are true, and you're seeing so many more great applications of them, even on the desktop.

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