“I can see clearly now, the rain is gone, I can see all obstacles in my way…” -Johnny Nash
As we approach 2008, the “Future of Search” seems to be less and less a guessing game every day. In fact, looking over my notes today, I think the answer is pretty well known.
Rand Fishkin wrote back in August,”Ask’s 3D interface is clearly the future of vertical results.” And what then? “…I suspect that the other engines are going to try playing leapfrog, rather than catch-up.” And finally, “This will probably mean some very unique (sic) interfaces…” Rand was a speaker at the SMX conference, and he deserves a lot of credit for putting the pieces together (Where are Search Engines most likely to Innovate?).
A month later, ICANN CEO Paul Twomey said, “Virtual worlds are the future of global commerce.” The author of this post, Duncan Riley, comments, “It’s interesting that the head of the body that controls the Internet believes that the world of tomorrow is virtual.”
Virtual Worlds Weekly, a month later still, listed 35 virtual world companies that have received a combined $1,000,000,000.00 of capital in the last twelve months.
Here’s my own definition of Web 3.0 (which has yet to catch on…oh well)
Caronte Web
Federated Search
Highlight Health
MSearchGroove
Ramenos Blog
Reel SEO
Software Abstractions
The Genius Files
The Next Web