Webbi

Webbi is an open standard and ecosystem designed to enhance interoperability among web content and services. Proposed as a way to unify metadata, linking, and discovery across domains, Webbi emphasizes privacy, modularity, and user control while enabling publishers to expose structured information and clients to navigate it.

Origin and development: Webbi emerged from a cross-disciplinary collaboration of researchers, librarians, and developers in the early 2010s. The first public proposal appeared in 2014, followed by community-led specifications and reference implementations. Governance is maintained by the Webbi Foundation, with input from industry and academia.

Technology and architecture: Webbi relies on a decentralized metadata layer and content-addressable identifiers. It defines a registry for discoverable metadata, a protocol for cross-site requests, and client-side tooling for rendering Webbi-enabled content. Privacy features include selective disclosure, access controls, and local-first caching.

Features: The system enables cross-domain linking of content, semantic tagging, and interoperable embedding of resources across websites. It supports versioning of metadata, offline access, and extensible plugins. Developers can build reusable components, and publishers can publish Webbi metadata alongside their content.

Usage and impact: Webbi has been adopted primarily by digital libraries, educational portals, and open-data platforms to improve searchability and navigation. End users benefit from more coherent navigation between related resources while maintaining control over what data is shared.

Reception and status: Critiques focus on complexity and the challenge of achieving broad consensus amid competing standards. Proponents highlight potential gains in interoperability and user privacy. As of the last update, ongoing work aims to broaden adoption and refine governance and interoperability with existing web technologies.