What is it that makes my favorite online services so compelling? I’m talking about the whole family of services that includes Dopplr, Wesabe, Twitter, Flickr, and del.icio.us among others.

I find it interesting that people don’t generally refer to any of these as “web sites”. They are “services”.

I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Dopplr’s Matt Biddulph and Matt Jones last week while in London where they described the architecture of what they’ve built in terms of connected data keys. The job of Dopplr, Mr. Jones said, was to “surface coincidence”.

I think that term slipped out accidentally, but I love it. What does it mean to “surface coincidence”?

It starts by enabling people to manufacture the circumstances by which coincidence becomes at least meaningful if not actually useful. Or, as Jon Udell put it years ago now when comparing Internet data signals to cellular biology:

“It looks like serendipity, and in a way it is, but it’s manufactured serendipity.”

All these services allow me to manage fragments of my life without requiring burdensome tasks. They all let me take my data wherever I want. They all enhance my data by connecting it to more data. They all make my data relevant in the context of a larger community.

When my life fragments are managed by an intelligent service, then that service can make observations about my data on my behalf.

Dopplr can show me when a distant friend will be near and vice versa. Twitter can show me what my friends are doing right now. Wesabe can show me what others have learned about saving money at the places where I spend my money. Among many other things Flickr can show me how to look differently at the things I see when I take photos. And del.icio.us can show me things that my friends are reading every day.

There are many many behaviors both implicit and explicit that could be managed using this formula or what is starting to look like a successful formula, anyhow. Someone could capture, manage and enhance the things that I find funny, the things I hate, the things at home I’m trying to get rid of, the things I accomplished at work today, the political issues I support, etc.

But just collecting, managing and enhancing my life fragments isn’t enough. And I think what Matt Jones said is a really important part of how you make data come to life.

You can make information accessible and even fun. You can make the vast pool feel manageable and usable. You can make people feel connected.

And when you can create meaning in people’s lives, you create deep loyalty. That loyalty can be the foundation of larger businesses powered by advertising or subscriptions or affiliate networks or whatever.

The result of surfacing coincidence is a meaningful action. And those actions are where business value is created.

Wikipedia defines coincidence as follows:

“Coincidence is the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection.”

This is, of course, similar and related to the definition of serendipity:

“Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.”

You might say that this is a criteria against which any new online service should be measured. Though it’s probably so core to getting things right that every other consideration in building a new online service needs to support it.

It’s probably THE criteria.

There was something really depressing about Web 2.0 Expo that I can’t quite put my finger on. Though when I woke up Monday morning after a weekend of working on my house it started to become more clear.

On Friday I prepared the work plan, rented a truck, and bought some new gear (loving the laser-guided cicular saw). On Saturday four of my friends came around to my house. We removed one wall and put up a new wall. On Sunday I hauled the junk to the dump, bought a bunch of sheetrock and more 2×4’s for next weekend’s job.

(By the way, great tip here, instead of hiring a garbage removal company for $700-1000, rent a 15 footer and just load all your trash directly into the truck bed. Drive it right into the dump yourself and push it out. The dumping cost for me was $75 plus the truck rental fee…which of course was super handy for getting the lumber, tools and sheetrock, too.)

Anyhow, now I have a 2 bedroom house where we once technically just had 1 bedroom. I also have a sore back and aching hands. Shredded skin on my fingers. A bruised elbow. Tired legs. I couldn’t be happier.

Struggling to get my body out of bed Monday morning, I realized I hadn’t thought about or even used the Internet for 3 days. I saved ideas by writing them down in a notebook with a pencil. I used the yellow pages to find things I needed. I contacted people using the telephone.

I wasn’t worrying about the scalability of the construction (only the joists over my workspace), optimizing the collaborative labor (except that they got coffee, food and beer), or marketing my property. I was simply building. With my hands (and a few borrowed ones).

I’ve argued over and over about how the Internet can change just about everything. And though I’m sure there are ways it could have helped me this weekend, there was something deeply satisfying about getting back to basics for a few days, particularly after losing the plot a bit last week.

Somehow the tone of the dialog in the Internet market has shifted away from the fundamentals, things like expanding the network or the concept of the network itself, building the tools and systems and data streams that help people accomplish things, creating the opportunities for new breakthroughs to emerge.

It’s a natural progression for a mature market to start optimizing for revenue gains as the platforms define themselves. I guess I’m just paranoid that the smell of instant fortune is wafting in the noses of sharks and leeches while the revenue models that they plan to exploit are emptier than they know. The spending arms race will surely follow where budgets won’t matter, hiring will get out of hand, and marketing messages will get silly.

But if the market crashes again or worse, violence or viruses erupt in our cities or the planet heats up, I’ll have my hammer ready for building things that people care about. That’s all I need. My trusty hammer. And my thermos. All I need is my thermos and my hammer, and maybe my chair…

There’s a magazine that I’d love to read if someone published it (yes, the print kind). Of course, it’s about the Internet. It’s about the stack that makes up the Internet, the platform or, as many people are calling it, the Internet Operating System. It’s mostly technology. But it’s a little bit business. And it’s definitely artful.

It’s not Business 2.0 or Red Herring. It’s not The Industry Standard, though I’d be happy to read that again, too. Those were/are too business-focused and often misunderstand the wider impact of many breakthroughs.

It challenges the people in positions to change things to make changes that matter. It exposes the advances in the market that have negative repurcussions to the Internet as a platform for good.

It’s critical and hard-hitting. It’s accurate. And it is therefore trusted and respected.

It isn’t first to report on anything. It might even be last, but it gets the story right.

It dives into services like Pipes, EC2, and Google Apps. It analyzes algorithms, data formats, developer tools, and interactive design. It studies human behaviors, market trends, new business models, leadership strategies and processes.

It’s not about startups, but it may be about why VCs like certain startups. I love the fact that Brad Burnham of Union Square Ventures disclosed the broader motivations for investing in AdaptiveBlue:

“We are particularly excited about the prospect of AdaptiveBlue developing tools that allow users to build the semantic web from the bottom-up to fill in the gaps and correct the top-down approach when necessary.”

This magzine should be printed monthly with lots of possibilities online that may actually be more successful in the long term. (I can imagine the print magazine turning into a sort of marketing vehicle for the web site. )

It includes longer deep-dive articles that have been throughly researched and copyedited. The editors are paid very well because they are experienced and talented. It also includes samples from the blogosphere and insights from contributors and participants who care deeply about the subject. There are intelligent interviews of people who are innovating and actually doing important things. There are insightful case studies of both the methods and results of certain technology breakthroughs. And there are columns that remind us to keep it real.

What I want from a new magazine about the Internet Operating System is to understand the technology breakthroughs and their meaning in the conext of the history of the Internet. I want to know what we can learn from art and innovation online to understand what lies ahead. The business model breakthroughs matter hugely, but I think they often matter as a result of an innovative technology rather than serve as a driver.

How is the Internet as a platform, operating system, network — whatever you want to call it — evolving? Who and what is influencing change? What are the trends that indicate this progression? How do new online developments impact communication, governments and social organizing principles?

Of course, a lot of this is out on the web in bits and pieces. But I’m too lazy to go through my entire feedreader and follow all the links to all the interesting stories out there. Maybe someone could invent a personalized and distributed Digg that surfaced what mattered to me more efficiently. But even then, I’d still pay a subscription fee and happily browse through endemic advertising for someone to assemble something thoroughly thought through, designed nicely and printed on my favorite portable reading medium — paper (recycled, of course).

And I’d read it in part because I would know everyone in the business would be reading it, too. At least, I suspect I’m not alone in wanting this…?