Happiest On The Dancefloor

Web 2.0/3.0 Let’s Get Personal

Preface: A week or so ago, I posted a link on Twitter to an article discussing web 2.0/3.0 and immediately, my friend Cesar @’d me, pleading with me not to use buzz words and arguing that the architecture of the internet hasn’t changed in 20 years. I like a good intellectual debate so I challenged him to a blog-off, where we’d each defend our stance on whether Web  2.0/3.0 is an appropriate term or just jargon. Hence, the post that follows…

In order to prepare for this blog-off, I had to do a bit of research on the history of the internet (yawn). I recognized that my formidable opponent comes from a computer science background and probably knows all the ins and outs of the technical history of the web and attempting to argue against him on any of those points would be futile, at best. However, while I don’t fluently speak CSS, .NET, or FTP, I think the support for Web 2.0/3.0 lies not in the technical changes in the web itself, but in the usability movements among the users. 

Logically, if there’s a Web 2.0, one can only conclude that there was once a Web 1.0. While that isn’t a term that was used during the period, I would classify Web 1.0 as a the time between 1993-2004ish. 1993 was the year Mosaic, the first graphical web browser, was introduced to the public. During this period, the internet existed mostly as “read only” with static HTML pages that offered limited user interaction. It’s hard, but if you try really hard, you might remember when websites looked like this:

If you encountered a site that looked like that now, I think there’d be a serious struggle to engage with the content. A concerted effort would be necessary to read through the endless scrolling page. 

So what happened between 1993-2004? Mass online commercialization, Hotmail, Google (yes, scarily, there was a world before Google), file sharing, the dotcom collapse, spam spam spam, Wikipedia, Skype, Myspace, etc. During this time, the cost of desktop computers began to fall, raising online accessibility across the globe. As more people started utilizing web resources, they sought avenues for online expression and interaction. They didn’t just want to read the content, they wanted to make the content! Thus, Web 2.0 was born.

Web 2.0 is classified as the “read-write” web. For me, Web 2.0 became real when I realized the internet wasn’t just something to use for school assignments or to send purposed emails, it was this place, albeit virtual, where I could exist and express and interact. I had a Livejournal and a Myspace, followed by a Xanga and a Facebook, and I was thrilled to push content, that in reality no one really should’ve cared that much about. But, what makes Web 2.0 real to me, is that people do care. They want to make these human touches in the virtual realm. Grown tech-savvy and enjoying the increased connectivity, users see that the potential for interaction is suddenly limitless. Their is a sophistication, both in the design and the use, of the web. Social networks emerge as a place to build relationships and build brands, Twitter allows people to stay up to date on news and senseless ramblings, and people have sincere relationships with their computers and the internet, that mixes into their regular lives. 

So this is where I think we are, but I think Web 3.0 is creeping into the picture, or should I say screen, and the 3.0 revolution has begun. As the amount of content becomes too much to discern through, context of information drives relevance. The web is becoming more semantic, in that content will no longer sit in silos that only databases interact with, it will open up to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time. Location based and relationship based services will have a lot to do with it and the proliferation of mobile connectivity will carry Web 3.0 into the future. 

While I can’t promise this will be the only super nerdy post on this blog, I’ll try to tone it down in the future. And, of course, I welcome any comments, questions or suggestions to my ramblings. 

And now, for something completely different…The brilliant Cesar Giralt on the ridiculousness of web 2.0 jargon.

2 April 2010 ·