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Announcing Web 3.0

posted on May 2, 2007


Just when you were starting to get tired of Web 2.0, David Siegel envisions Web 3.0. We’re not there yet, but it sounds pretty darn cool:

The best way to sum up Web 3.0 is to say that, in the future, everything will be smart. No longer will you need to go to several web sites to research flights and fares, then book your own ticket with your credit card information on a particular site. In Web 3.0, you’ll just send your software agent on a mission to watch for and book a flight that meets your criteria at the best price (and at the last possible second, giving you more flexibility than you had before).

He says the three main areas of Web 3.0 will be the semantic web, universal product and service descriptors and the online desktop. He concludes: “The Semantic Web is smart, it’s inside-out, it’s made of interchangeable parts, and it updates instantly.”

It’s not an entirely “disinterested” perspective. Siegel’s looking to hire a Web 3.0 intern and says he’s developed a 28-page business plan for “a fund to start Web 3.0 companies here in New York City.”

Siegel also mentions some “Web 2.5″ efforts to gather and categorize data. Hm, that mission sounds familiar… (Okay, technically, he says data “that’s either unstructured or loosely structured in a nonstandard way.”)

Anyone else have their Web 3.0 predictions ready?
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  • http://www.brianwhite.org/ Brian White

    “In Web 3.0, you’ll just send your software agent on a mission to watch for and book a flight that meets your criteria at the best price”

    I had dusty copies of Wired that talked of that very thing, that I threw out 7-8 years ago :)

    The only prediction I can make is that you’ll look back a few years into whatever slowly-evolving-yet-disruptive technology you’re comtemplating, and not imagine life without it. Maybe that’s web X.0 (shrug) :)

  • http://www.terryhoward.net/ Terry Howard

    Yeah, I agree, I’ve been hearing about shopping robots and such back as far as when I used a modem. Not to say they won’t be used, but how much more useful is that? How much different is using shopping comparison engines to generate results that you can peruse than having a “bot” go and get you what it thinks you want. I think more likely we’ll see more customized search and content based on user defined profiles and parameters, much of which we are already seeing. That would be more like Web 2.5. Web 3.0 would have to be something so new and so different it warrants the full version increase!

  • Dean

    I have no idea about Web 2.0 vs. Web 3.0 vs. Web 4.0, etc., other than I am tired of the buzzwording. Just shut-up and let the development happen.

  • http://www.u-g-h.com Owen

    As Brian above says; the concept of software agents is anything but new. I haven’t seen anything that’s compelling enough for the industry to back yet. Will be fun to watch this space

  • http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/ Yihong Ding

    “Anyone else have their Web 3.0 predictions ready?” Well, yes. I have recently posted an article about web evolution, which could be found at here: http://www.deg.byu.edu/ding/WebEvolution/evolution-dream.html

    In this Part 2, I have summerized a theory of web evolution, from which I predict the next stage of WWW (which could be named Web 3.0). There are some similarity between my vision and David Siegel’s vision. You would like to read it.

    In general, this is something I very much agree with David. Web 3.0 is not semantic web. Semantic web is a visionary prediction that the web content is going to be more and more productive in its usage. When machines can understand meanings of web data, these data certainly become more useful. But the realization of semantic web is a progressive process rather than to reach a stage because we may always demand richer semantics. Is Web 2.0 semantic web? Is Web 3.0, 4.0 or x.0 semantics web? We can only say that the web contains richer and richer machine-processible semantics, and thus it is more and more closer to be the ideal semantic web.

    On the contrary, Web 3.0 (or x.0) is a particular stage that is identifible. So Web 3.0 and semantic web is two different concepts that specifies different aspects of web evolution. I really dislike the misuse of these two terms.

    In my article of evolution, I made an analogy about semantic web and Web x.0. In general, web evolves just like human grows. The vision of semantic web is to allow us educate our children to be educated people. But “educated people” is a vague term because there are so many different levels of being educated. Are elementary-school children educated people? Are high-school students educated people? Or must it be colleage graduate to be educated people? You see, people become more and more educated when growing up, just like the web will become more and more “semantic” when it evolves.

    Web 3.0, however, is a web of elementary-school children. I have many detailed explanation of why this analogy works in my article. In contrast, Web 1.0 is a web of newborns, and Web 2.0 is a web of pre-school kids. Web evolution is magically similar to the growth of human beings.

    I hope you and all of your readers would like this article of web evolution.

    By the way, it is only the first draft. So any comments are welcomed, either through emails or in my blog.

    Yihong

  • http://nowasciana.pl/ Paulo

    Hi,

    Sorry but web3.0 trend has been officially started in Poland.

    You can try that website: http://nowasciana.pl/

    It’s fully controlled by community

    Cheers,
    Paulo

  • http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/ Yihong Ding

    Hi Paulo,

    I have just watched your site but cannot get why it is Web 3.0. Could you do an explanation?

    Yihong

  • http://nowasciana.pl/ Paulo

    http://www.distinctseo.com/blog/web/what-comes-after-web-20-web-cubed/

    Meets everything described here.

    Cheers,
    Paulo

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