Ben FrancisMar 5

New blog post: Putting the Web back in the Web of Things https://tola.me.uk/blog/2026/03/05/putting-the-web-back-in-the-web-of-things/

We spent over a decade standardising the Web of Things, but I believe it’s still missing a key component it needs in order to grow. 🧵

Putting the Web back in the Web of Things

We spent over a decade standardising the Web of Things, but I believe it’s still missing a key component it needs in order to grow. I this blog post I provide a deep-dive retrospective into the last 10+ years of standardisation, how the Web of Things is being used today, and what I believe it is sti

Ben Francis
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The Web of Things started with the simple but powerful idea of giving connected devices URLs on the web, to extend the World Wide Web of pages into a web of physical objects which can be monitored and controlled over the internet.
Mar 5 at 4:26pmWeb
Show threadBen FrancisMar 5
The WoT Working Group has made great progress in standardising building blocks for discovering and describing connected devices, but when it comes to communicating with them we've become stuck describing existing IoT protocols rather than defining something native to the web.
Show threadBen FrancisMar 5
In this blog post I take a deep dive into the last 10+ years of standardisation, how we got where we are today, and why I believe the Web of Things is still missing an essential component due to a subtle misunderstanding about what makes the web the web.
Show threadBen FrancisMar 5
I explain how I think we can put the “web” back in the “Web of Things” with a universal web-based application layer protocol, enabling an open ecosystem of IoT web services which weave together the rich tapestry of the IoT rather than cementing the current fragmented landscape.