We had our annual portfolio summit yesterday. Lots of great discussion around a broad range of topics. One that was especially interesting was whether or not a ‘headless’ web service can be successful. By 'headless’ I mean a web service that is all backend and does not have its own frontend. Such a service would rely on third parties to build frontends for it. One argument against this approach was that it would put the service at the mercy of other developers who might never create a compelling user experience. A counter argument was that not having one’s own frontend would make the service non-threatening to frontend developers and result in more innovation and ultimately more usage. I argued that it might be possible to have the best of both worlds by creating some reference frontends that show a range of possible great user experiences and opensource these with a very liberal license. That would keep the service itself neutral and yet help with ensuring that great frontends are in fact released. What are examples of services that might benefit from such a strategy? For instance an OpenID provider could be headless. Or a data storage service. Come to think of it Amazon Web Services are a great example. Among startup web services that a pursuing this approach are Gnip and AMEE. I believe that in the future we will see many more web services that take the 'headless’ approach.

We had our annual portfolio summit yesterday. Lots of great discussion around a broad range of topics. One that was especially interesting was whether or not a ‘headless’ web service can be successful. By 'headless’ I mean a web service that is all backend and does not have its own frontend. Such a service would rely on third parties to build frontends for it. One argument against this approach was that it would put the service at the mercy of other developers who might never create a compelling user experience. A counter argument was that not having one’s own frontend would make the service non-threatening to frontend developers and result in more innovation and ultimately more usage. I argued that it might be possible to have the best of both worlds by creating some reference frontends that show a range of possible great user experiences and opensource these with a very liberal license. That would keep the service itself neutral and yet help with ensuring that great frontends are in fact released. What are examples of services that might benefit from such a strategy? For instance an OpenID provider could be headless. Or a data storage service. Come to think of it Amazon Web Services are a great example. Among startup web services that a pursuing this approach are Gnip and AMEE. I believe that in the future we will see many more web services that take the 'headless’ approach.