As seen at talentzoo.com.
It’s been around for a few years, but I had thus far had the fortuity to ignore it. Then one day it finally appeared with smug self-satisfaction, screaming its name into my psyche with mind-numbing, boastful pride. And there it was, sitting in front of me. Had I known it was coming, I would have made like a see-no-evil monkey and covered my eyes tightly.
Web 3.0.
Seriously?
Honestly, how long did it take professionals to overuse the term 2.0? About five minutes? They couldn’t describe it, nor could they explain it. As one blogger recently put it, “It’s like pornography. You know it when you see it.“ So when professionals tried to explain it to laypeople, they said “Web 2.0” and got a lot of blank stares. Who thought it was such a good idea that we need a continuation of the term? To put it in filmographical terms, there’s reason there was no “The Last Action Hero 2.” It’s because the first one didn’t do so hot.
So, for those of you who have been lucky to avoid it thus far, what exactly is Web 3.0? Well, you’d not be shocked to learn that professionals are once again having trouble nailing it down.
The reality is that the next stage of Web evolution is pretty cool. It takes into account all of the available parameters of its user: place, time, demographic info, and their every desire. Then, it delivers content based on that information. The key part of it is that it’s fusing the web into a bunch of applications, which has been already happening for quite a while. If you have a smartphone, you know exactly what I’m talking about. So instead of opening a browser and typing, “Where’s the closest Starbucks?” you simply open up your tablet/phone/new magical iDevice and hit the Starbucks app. Maybe it’s possible to speak into your phone and say “I want a venti mocha latte at the nearest location.” It replies with the fact that your order has been taken and paid for, and will be ready in five minutes under your name. There’s a lot going into that action, but it gives you a taste of what is meant by it.
Pretty cool, I must admit. It’s one reason to love this medium. It’s ever-changing, growing, and adapting to its users. You rarely see TV or radio do that, but enough tangents.
My beef is that the description sounds a lot cooler than calling it “Web 3.0.” Professionals need to do a better job of selling their medium instead of trying to use jargon or sound smart. I realize it’s a fun way of getting back at all of those people who called them geeks in school, but the reality is that a lot of normal people want to buy our cool new technologies, designs, and UIs. We just have to sell it to them in a way that they not only understand, but that excites them.
So before we go down the “Web 3.0” road of no return, let’s use terms like, Easy Web, Location-based Web, Web Anywhere, Application-based Web (that may be too high-brow) or even the Jetson’s Web (which I’m sure is already trademarked). Anything but Web 3.0.
What do you say? Any other ideas?