What is Web 3.0?

I just came back from one of the largest and growing interactive conferences, SXSW. One of the hot topics was - What is Web 3.0. My impression was no one has quite cracked it. Some say mobile will be big, and data analytics is crucial. OK. Please tell us something we don’t already know…

There’s nothing 3.0 about mobile. It’s totally 2.0, and 2.1 at best (one can argue QR codes driving traffic to mobile sites is quite 2.1). Even with social location and augmented reality, they still don’t tip us over 2.x.

What is Web 3.0 then really? Well, if I have the answer, I wouldn’t be writing a blog post, but instead doing heavy coding in my garage. (Not that I have a garage either…) My take on the evolution of web 2.0 lies all in the long tail. Not exactly the long tail coined by Chris Anderson in 2004. Anderson’s theory was that most of the revenue comes from many niche products, and only 20% of revenue is from big hits, mainstream products. In general, one can interprete that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

To build on the long tail theory, my take is that we are using the long tail to identify and connect with like minded people. Our attention and needs will become more fragmented. We will breakdown our interests to finer levels. And with the vast amount of data the web has on us, it will become much better at understanding our fragmented interests, and connect us with people who share those interests. Case in point -Twitter. Twitter lets us connect to people with very specific interest. If you like baby blue peep toes platform shoes, there’s probably already a hashtag for this on Twitter. The Lists feature on Twitter is a tool to help you segment your contacts. What missing is the ability to post tweets to specific groups.

Having that said, the need to connect to the 20% ‘mainstream’ people will not go away. And this is where Facebook comes in.

But this is no where near Web 3.0 either. So let me know if you have a better idea, I got some savings. Perhaps I’ll be your angel investor ;)