The Definitive Definition of Web 3.0

The Rise of Web 3.0 (and a Free Pass to the upcoming Web 3.0 conference in Santa Clara)

This week, I had the privilege to participate in a panel discussion held by the Toronto Product Manager Association, on the topic of Web 2.0, Web 3.0, and what product managers can do with them. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much traction the Web 3.0 topic got.

The Web 3.0 conference and expo that’s coming up in two weeks will be another important milestone. I look forward to seeing many of you at the panel I will be on, which is panel “B4” on Business models, strategies, and valuation for the Web 3.0 alongside Hank Williams of Kloudshare, Tal Keinan of SemantiNet, and Eghosa D. Omoigui of Intel Capital. I’d like to meet many readers and encourage you to connect through LinkedIn ahead of time.

To encourage you to comment and interact, I will give away ONE FREE Full-Conference Pass ($1,095 value) to the best commenter on this post, or anyone who contacts me to meet there (to avoid humiliation if this post was to not receive that many comments...:)!

So it’s interesting to see how Web 3.0 is gaining momentum. Trends in online search and blog post volume appear to confirm this rise of the Web 3.0 theme. I will post separately about those, as the multiple graphs would be a bit of a distraction to this post.

Many web users will probably come to the Semantic Web by way of the Web 3.0 idea. Given how nebulous it may feel – keeping with the tradition its Web 2.0 sister started – defining it is the new game in town. Let me relieve your pain and end the waste, so we can finally get back to watching our savings disintegrate with the US economy… Below, friends, is the ultimate, final, forever-written-in-stone definition of what Web 3.0 is about, has always been, will ever be!

Web 2.0 and 3.0 are useful marketing packages for a range of complex technologies and protocols

First, let me clarify that both Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 are marketing concepts (think Tim O’Reilly). Actually, I suspect they might even have been sponsored by venture capitalists...! And obviously, they were relayed by journalists. So what we had was perhaps the three most reviled professions on the planet uniting to package a mix of innovations and labeling it with a simplistic term whose definition could morph on demand...

If you ever met some programmers, you probably know that most don’t really thrive on simplification and fuzzy concepts. Hence the uproar and controversies that immediately ensued in the community. Even Tim Berners-Lee joined in, not surprisingly (refer back to my cliché on programmers, above) questioning "whether one can use the term in any meaningful way, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have existed since the early days of the Web" (as per Wikipedia). That was missing the idea that Web 2.0 is an evangelization and business concept first and foremost.

Bad publicity being better than no publicity at all, the fuzzy marketers, VCists, and journalist did not really complain.

The Earth kept rotating, and Web 2.0 is now generally associated with the idea of user-generated content. It is enabled by technologies such as Java, Ajax (although the Wikipedia entry on Web 2.0 argues against this association), CSS, and applications such as Wiki, RSS, weblogs, mashups and of course social networking. These technologies, protocols and applications do not all centre on the idea of user-generated content. Mashups and RSS for instance are only indirectly related to the idea.

If Web 2.0 is about user-generated content, what is Web 3.0 about?

Web 3.0 is another way of packaging maturing technologies and applications, and it is in search of a lead marketing theme such as that of “user-generated content”. Just like with Web 2.0, it is marketing really trying to catch up with technology, so looking at the technologies is the most robust way to anchor the concept of Web 3.0, before we talk about marketing themes.

It might be useful at this point to remind you that you can click on any word in this post to get a definition, as the names below might seem alien if you're new to this space.

When I think “Web 3.0 technologies”, I think first of protocols such as URIs / Linked Data, Creative Commons, and Open ID, and Semantic Web technologies such as the RDF stack, ontologies and natural language processing (which I lump into the semantic web due to the degree of conceptualization it requires). I also think of high-speed mobile and localization technologies such as 3G and HSDPA, cheap GPS sensors and GPRS. And, a bit uniquely, I think of data recognition and conversion technologies, such as voice recognition (e.g. Vonage now offers a voicemail transcription service - Don't know if it works, but I have never been deceived by that company) or image pattern recognition (think image search engine such as that of Idee).

Many also add network computing to the list, with concepts such as Software-as-a-Service and cloud computing, which I’d argue are not really “technologies”, but applications of technologies.

Web 3.0 is not the Semantic Web

With all those technologies and the commercial interest they fuel, you can imagine there is more than one contender for the lead marketing role in the possible blockbuster “Web 3.0”. The Semantic Web has recently made great strides in its attempt to become a synonym of Web 3.0. It’s supported by the key theme of the “Intelligent Web”. See this article, Web 3.0 is on its way: Why should you care?, for example.

Next to it, we find the “Ubiquitous Web”, which you can access from anywhere, and where all your data and applications can reside. Other themes have bubbled up, such as the Distributed Web (related sometimes to Open Data, sometimes to network computing), the Personal Web (all data is wrapped around the user), the Personal Assistant Web (eliminating information overload – I'll believe it when I see it…), the Social Web (isn't that web 2.0?), the Contextual Web (that's the Semantic Web isn't it?), the Serendipity Web (discover more interesting stuff? I don't buy that as the central benefit of the next web, sorry, see information overload above), the Web-wide World (idea of Augmented Reality, which Spivack commented on recently) and I’m sure I forget many others.

I think all that is going to coalesce into two core themes. One, I already talked about, is the Intelligent Web, which as I mentioned is already taking roots through the Semantic Web.

It’s hinging a lot on the technology, though: Linked data or RDF do not make the web much more intelligent. A lot of what we were promised would make the web not just incrementally intelligent, but vastly more intelligent, doesn’t seem to work just yet. There is a question mark on the Intelligent Web, in my opinion, and I’d guess it will need to wait for web 4.0.

So the main theme of Web 3.0, I suggest, may be that of Openness.

Openness may be the key theme in Web 3.0

A lot of what I described above can be wrapped in that simple concept. Web 3.0 is the Web of Openness. A web that breaks the old siloes, links everyone everything everywhere, and makes the whole thing potentially smarter.

This web tackles the virtual siloes Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 have created and solves the physical siloes our limited early-century technology was forcing us into:

• Corporate databases: no illustration needed here, I think…
• Formats: all that unstructured data in voicemails, emails, web apps, office documents
• Media: mobile phone, office computer, home computer, web-enabled devices,
• User profiles: how many profiles do you have on the web? How many social networks profiles do you have? Seriously…
• Tags: take pictures for instance, Flickr has its tags, Facebook has its tags, Picasa has its tags… its getting ridiculous
• Places: how many providers do I need to get on the web everywhere I go? Why can’t I access the web on the car, on the plane, on the train (all that is on the way)? Why can't the web adapt my content if I let it know where I am in an open manner?
• Metadata: I’ve mentioned tags, which is metadata about your content, and there is a lot more metadata generated about your usage of the web too. Will Web 3.0 open that up? Mmm, it will open it up a little. Proprietary siloes make lots of money for their owners. I may be wrong, but I think open standards don’t tend to make anyone in particular rich beyond their wildest dreams. I’ll keep for another posts the big questions of How to make money on the Web 3.0 and What it will likely be best for, business-wise (hint: brand awareness…)

Building on the above, I can decompose the openness trend into different pieces, I am talking Open standards (OpenID, Linked Data, RDF), Open applications (APIs, more SaaS), Open channels (mobile phone talks to computer talks to car audio system talks to fridge, in both directions), Open media (voice-to-text, picture-to-text, text-to-picture, video-to-text), Open visualization (tailor your own views, get more video), and perhaps, perhaps only, more Open source too.

In the world of Web 3.0, the idea of Openness will reign, emphasizing the reuse and transformation of information.  I don’t know whether it will be called the Open Web, as the expression has been used before but, if I were you, I’d watch out for Openness.

Here it is, you have the definitive eternal ultimate definition of Web 3.0! Now, I'd take better care of your investments if I were you. As a start, you can also post some comments and get that free ticket to the Web 3.0 conference.

 

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