FluidInfo

What is Fluidinfo?

Fluidinfo is an online information storage and search platform. Its design supports shared openly-writable metadata of any type and about anything, provides modern writable APIs, and allows data to be branded with domain names.

The opportunity

Read-only information storage is a major disadvantage for business in a world increasingly driven by lightweight social applications. In the natural world we routinely put metadata where it is most useful, e.g., bookmarks in books, post-it notes in specific locations, and name tags around necks at conferences. But in the digital world businesses and consumers usually cannot store metadata in its most useful location—in context—because traditional storage is not openly writable. Potential value is reduced when data is in read-only silos as related information cannot be combined or searched across. Flexibility and spontaneity are restricted when future needs must be anticipated or write permission must first be obtained.

The unique properties of Fluidinfo change this situation completely

Fluidinfo provides a universal metadata engine because it has an object for everything imaginable, just like Wikipedia has a web page for everything. Fluidinfo objects can always have data added to them by any user or application, so related metadata can be stored in the same place. This allows it to be combined in searches, and remixed to great effect, increasing its value over metadata held in isolated databases. Fluidinfo allows information owners to put their internet domain names onto data and has a simple, flexible, and powerful permissions system.

The thinking behind Fluidinfo

Humans are diverse and unpredictable. We create, share, and organize information in an infinite variety of ways. We've even built machines to process it. Yet for all their capacity and speed, using computers to work with information is often awkward and frustrating. We are allowed very little of the spontaneity that characterizes normal human behavior. Our needs must be anticipated in advance by programmers. Far too often we can look, but not touch.

Why isn't it easier to work with information using a computer?

At Fluidinfo we believe the answer lies in information architecture. A rigid underlying platform inhibits or prevents spontaneity. A new information architecture can be the basis for a new class of applications. It can provide freedom and flexibility to all applications, and these advantages could be passed on to users.

We've spent the last several years designing and building Fluidinfo to be just such an architecture.

Fluidinfo makes it possible for data to be social. It allows almost unlimited information personalization by individual users and applications, and also between them. This makes it simple to build a wide variety of applications that benefit from cooperation, and which are open to unanticipated future enhancements. Even more importantly, Fluidinfo facilitates and encourages the growth of applications that leave users in control of their own data.

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