I see it like this: the platform is made up of millions of individuals (called “bloggers” now but in the future - “people”). These folks all provide services via their blog tools. Right now I’m providing an HTML service, an RSS service, a reading list service, and a FOAF service, a pingback service and a comment service. Only the last two are two-way.

So, the blog as garden idea is that I provide my services. I distribute those services over the platform of the Web. The platform is simply where we come to agreement on communication. We’re essentially calling APIs over HTTP, for the most part.

Way back when…the Semantic Web was going to be about all these nice services that we could use, like say a mapping service with which we could build powerful tools like all the map mashups we’re seeing. And developers are taking big strides in this direction, like the list-making tools I wrote about earlier.

However, I think that these services will eventually be recast as personal services, so that we help ourselves instead of being helped by others.

We cultivate our garden of services using platform-aware protocols, formats, and APIs.