Web 1.0 – That Geocities & Hotmail era was all about read-only content and static HTML websites. People preferred navigating the web through link directories of Yahoo! and dmoz.
Web 2.0 – This is about user-generated content and the read-write web. People are consuming as well as contributing information through blogs or sites like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. The line dividing a consumer and content publisher is increasingly getting blurred in the Web 2.0 era.
Web 3.0 – This will be about semantic web (or the meaning of data), personalization (e.g. iGoogle), intelligent search and behavioral advertising among other things.
If that sounds confusing, check out some of these excellent presentations that help you understand Web 3.0 in simple English. Each takes a different approach to explain Web 3.0 and the last presentation uses an example of a “postage stamp” to explain the “semantic web”.
Hey, that is a good video. It explained the ‘semantic’ web concept pretty well. However, now I am more comfortable with the meaning… I am less comfortable with the implications.
Web3.0 extrapolates to a world where every device you come in contact reports on you back to the cloud. Every interaction teaches the internet something about yourself. the internet as an entity is able to use to tailor content back for you.
I find this an incredibly disturbing concept; its brave-new-world-esque. It encourages group think, where you are being delivered content like the content you that interests people like yourself. And its pattern based, leading towards repeating the same pattern.
The ultimate endpoint is an internet that simply delivers a user choices based on the entire existence up to that point. A user simply makes a decision based on the choices delivered, perpetuating that cycle. A person could conceivably live an entire life without ever deviating from the path set out by the grand overlord internet and its logic.
Obviously we are a long way from that road. but these are the core principles of Web3.0