Written by Alberto Perea
Before we talk about Web standardization, we must be clear about what standardization is and what it consists of.
A little history of standardization
Throughout the history of mankind, human beings have lived in groups, which eventually evolved into complex societies.
Given our social nature, in which relationships with others is one of the cornerstones of our survival, the process of standardization has always been of fundamental importance.
Standardization, at a general level, is an effective way of facilitating and streamlining relationships between people, and ultimately enables communication between individuals. Different languages are examples of standardization without which the transmission of information between people would not have been possible. Languages became our first standardized form of communication.Although the standardization process took place de facto, without having planned it, the emergence of the media and therefore ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) has forced us to make the effort to search for and set standards.
The first standards set for interpersonal mass communication media date back to the 1960s and 1970s, and set the technical guidelines for telegraphic communication. The body in charge was UT (Union Telegraphique). In 1945, it became part of the consultative body of the UN under the name of ITU (International Telecommunications Union) for the purpose of developing telecommunications standards. Currently, and after several structural changes, it continues to develop its work.
ITU develops its standardization work in three main areas:
- ITU-T: Responsible for Telecommunication Standardization
- ITU-R: Responsible for the radio communications sector
- ITU-D: Telecommunication Development Officer
Standardization on the Internet
The Web was born in 1991 thanks to the creation of hypertext by Tim Berners-Lee. The Web is a communication media with pretensions of being global, worldwide, where we can all participate in the creation of content, and we can all consume such content.
With these premises, it is easy to understand the spectacular growth that the medium is experiencing since its creation. According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “Humanity had created until 2003 an amount equivalent to 5 Exabytes”, adding that now this figure was generated in 2 days. This statement implies that in just two days the same amount of information is generated worldwide as in the entire previous history of mankind, and we are talking about data from 2011.
This rapid growth and development of the medium is only possible by means of web standardization, which has democratized the medium in the broadest sense. We can all generate and share information without the need for extensive knowledge of programming or computer science, and technical development is unified, centralizing the efforts of all the agents involved and thus ensuring a vertical evolution of the environment.
Tim Berners-Lee is considered the father of the web and is currently the chairman and founder of the consortium
W3C
(World Wide Web Consortium), which, together with
IEEE
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ),
IAB
(Interactive Advertising Bureau ) IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and
Internet Society
The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and the Internet Society are the most important organizations in the generation of Internet standards in all sectors. Since August 29, 2012, they have been working in a coordinated manner under the name of Open-Standard, which brings together the five consortia.
Although each consortium develops its standards following its own structures and procedures, they all do so under the same principles agreed upon beforehand, which can be summarized as follows:
- Cooperation. Open-Stand members work cooperatively, but independently.
- Adherence to the principles of: Broad consensus, transparency, balance, openness.
- Impartiality in standardization processes.
- Collective training.
- Collective compatibility of standards.
- Voluntary adaptation of standards.
The development and evolution that the Internet has experienced and will experience is directly linked to the standards of this group, although the most relevant and influential to the branch of online marketing are due to W3C, which can be summarized as follows:
- Web 1.0 and Web 2.0: Http and Html, XHtml, CSS, XML, XSLT
- Web 3.0 o Semantic Web o Linked Data: Html5, RDF, RDFa, SPARQL, OWL
Online Markenting and Web standardization
The evolution of the Internet is forcing Online Marketing professionals to become more and more familiar with Web programming concepts in order to be able to execute strategies that cover all aspects of an Internet communication campaign. Only by anticipating what the future standards will be and how they will be can we decipher what the future of the Internet may look like. As online marketing professionals we must be attentive to the news of the collective of organizations that form Open-Standard and try to decipher what will be our “playing field” in the future.
If there is something demonstrable in Online Marketing is that it is a highly variable market, so the guarantee of success lies in anticipation. Attentive.
