Personalization, Vertical Search and Web 3.0
Thursdays on AltSearchEngines we invite guest authors to share their insights about some aspect of Search. Today we are fortunate to have
One year ago we were discussing whether Web 2.0 was or was not a bubble waiting for the right time to blow. A couple of months ago several folks started using the Web 3.0 term, but all of them failed to create a better definition for it than the one for Web 2.0. Furthermore, each one using the term was defining it his own way, so there is really no consensus on what Web 3.0 is.
The conflict of definitions is clear: Wikipedia’s entry on Web 3.0 starts with, “Web 3.0 is a term that has been coined with different meanings to describe the evolution of Web usage and interaction among several separate paths. These include transforming the Web into a database, a move towards making content accessible by multiple non-browser applications, the leveraging of artificial intelligence technologies, the Semantic web, or the Geospatial Web;” but maybe more important than that is the discussion page for that article that has three times more text than the article itself.
My take is that Web 3.0 shouldn’t be considered the same as the Semantic Web or the Geoweb. Those two terms were coined before the wide use of the Web 3.0 term, so if the Web 3.0 was just that, why wouldn’t people refer to it by their names? I think (yet I might be completely wrong) that the idea of saying that Web 3.0 is the same as the Semantic Web was brought by this NY Times article, 0r you can instead check this article criticizing the New York Times’ one. But the term really appeared as a synonym of Semantic Web (if we ignore the sarcastic references to the term), they’re also already trying to coin Web 4.0… So let’s stop this rush of wanting to increase the Web’s “major version number”, and see what Web 3.0 could be. Web 2.0 is a new web, in the sense that it is social, contextual, data-driven and focusing on its users. Web 3.0, to deserve that name, has to be such a big paradigm shift as that one.
Other thinkers of the Web 2.0 world have different definitions for it, though; one of them being “Web 3.0 = Music 2.0 + Games 2.0 + Web 3D”, and I don’t doubt that, while that is an ugly definition, this one isn’t far from truth. Maturing Web 2.0 will bring us Web 3.0, that will come naturally. Other definitions come, and this one is probably the nearest to my own vision of the future of Web: R/WW writer Sramana Mitra defined Web 3.0 with this formula: Web 3.0 = 4C + P + VS, or, in words, Web 3.0 is a mashup between Content, Commerce, Community, Context, Personalization and Vertical Search. Of course this isn’t a widely accepted definition, and R/WW even did a contest for definitions of Web 3.0 after that definition was posted and used.
But, more than finding out who said what, or what people say Web 3.0 is, the simple definition will never change from “the web we’ll have in a couple of years”. With that in mind, here comes my own concept of Web 3.0, mashing up definitions from others.
Web 3.0: A web where the concept of website or webpage disappears, where data isn’t owned but instead shared, where services show different views for the same web/the same data. Those services can be applications (like browsers, virtual worlds or anything else), devices or other, and have to be focused on context and personalization, and both will be reached by using vertical search.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:33 am
The only thing worse than someone using the term web 2.0 out of context is someone using web 3.0 out of context. I love the jumpy, web wannabees who attach there half-baked ideas to these terms, this article is well put and exercising moderation well.
But anyway, seriously I think its way to early to specify exactly what a web 3.0 application is. However, I agree there is enough evidence to say web 3.0 is about Content, Commerce, Community, Context, Personalization and Vertical Search. Yea its a broad group of terms, but for those looking to make head-way with progressive applications that blend makes sense.
For me its all about discovering which sector of the web will leverage the most value from the above traits. Will it be Social Search, Commerce, Enterprise, all three mashed?
Does anyone have a list of companies that throw around the 3.0 term and who they will be serving. I think that might provide more insight as to the short-term direction of technologies and services being coined 3.0.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:53 am
Hi Jeff,
From my research, there are some claims from companies “researching on Web 3.0″, but, besides vapourare and hype, there’s nothing there to see.
I genericly agree with what you said, and so I just wish that some common ground is set over the term, so we stop having people refering to the same thing with different terms (like calling Web 3.0 to the Semantic Web), and thus spreading confusion.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:02 am
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August 6th, 2007 at 2:31 am
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August 6th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Here is a good PDF paper, that is freely downloadable from Prof. John Kleinberg, which perhaps point to some useful concepts for web 3.0:
Query Incentive Networks