Ryan Angilly

OSI layer 9 is coming

Who remembers this little guy:

This is the Open Systems Interconnect model for software on the internet, and it no longer tells the whole story.

Over the past several years, an 8th layer has emerged and stabilized: the social communication layer.  Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook have become de facto standards for interconnecting the ‘open systems’ that we call people.

With LinkedIn’s IPO this week, lots of people are saying it’s the dawn of a new era for innovation and creation of value on the internet.  There has been lots of discussion and speculation on what’s coming next.

I look at my smartphone, and what do I see?  Instagram, Hashable, PicPlz, Tumblr, soundtracking, BlipSnips.  I see utilities that are built on top of the 8th layer.  The next big thing on the internet is going to be the standardization of layer 9.  Just like TCP/IP standardized 4 & 5, Unicode standardized layer 6, HTTP standardized layer 7 and Twitter standardized layer 8, the standardization of layer 9 will yield the next generation of super companies.

So what’s it going to look like?  It’s anybody’s guess.  I have some ideas, but those are for other posts.  I just wanted to take a minute to get my thoughts straight on the matter, and pose the question to you: What do you think layer 9 is going to look like?

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