Web 3.0 Can Wait
Nicholas Carr has never been one to shy away from voicing his opinion and although his arguments sound good, many times I find myself disagreeing with him because he always seems to be a bit disconnected from the rest of the Web. One of his latest posts titled, Welcome Web 3.0, talks about his relief to know that Web 2.0 is out the door and Web 3.0 is being ushered in. Hold up now, I’m not one to get into what makes something Web 2.0 or not, but to be grateful that it is on the way out just so we can start talking about something new is jumping the gun a bit.
If the Web has been around since ‘94 (give or take a year) and Web 2.0 “started” in 2004 (I know this can be argued, but whatever) then only two years later we are all ready for the next phase of the web? Sure if you have been talking about Web 2.0 for the last year then you are probably getting tired of seeing the same websites copy the same websites and in your opinion nothing innovated is coming out anymore, but just because you are ready to see something new doesn’t mean the other 99% are ready for that leap.
How many everyday people do you know use Web 2.0 sites? How many people are thrilled with the potential of tagging or even bother to see what’s hot in the blogosphere by checking Technorati? How many everyday people feel that if a site doesn’t have a RSS feed then it serves no purpose to them?
How many sites have more users than Yahoo or MySpace, which are both considered to be Web 1.0 sites? Sure some sites might be ready for Web 3.0 and whatever the hell it is supposed to bring, but you need users to actually know and understand what is going on for it to be useful. The semantic web, the web we all have been dreaming for simply doesn’t make itself and in all honesty 99.99999% of the sites out there are not ready for it yet either.
Sure it sounds great that we will be able to type in a question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.” and get the exact result we are looking for, but is it really needed yet? Especially when we still have so many problems still to tackle in this phase of the web? This is the Web that Tim Berners-Lee thought of over a decade ago, but we certainly weren’t in any rush then so I don’t think our impatience of talking about the same stuff should lead us to believe that we need to usher in the not so near future now.
I know that none of us that write on these crazy blogs think like the normal people think (they are weird aren’t they?), but what makes us believe that we are the ones to dictate where the world is going when none of us have created a site that even 5% of the web’s population has used (that would be around 50M users for all those calculating at home). We are stuck in our own echo chamber so when sites such as ReviewMe offer to pay you to write about them, we see 20 of our favorite sites doing so and all of a sudden get sick with the web, but also forget that there is so much more beyond those sites. I’m still enjoying the current phase of the web and believe that I have a lot more to learn so I’m in no rush to go anywhere.
Web 2.0 is too much fun.
More on what makes Web 3.0 great can be seen in the New York Times article Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense. Kottke believes you deserve an eye-poke just for saying “Web 3.0″. I’m down with that.
I read this article in our local newspaper the other day. I was intrigued by what he had to say, but I agree with you - even in his article he seems to disconnected (or understanding) from how the web works.
Personally, I just get tired of buzzwords to create hype from people who really have no idea what they are talking about.
By Nate K on November 13, 2006 2:35 pm
I agree, Scrivs. I enjoy the echo chamber but I too realize that little of what goes on truly impacts our lives. I think we both discovered that when we went without the internet for a bit. I think Web2.0 is still trying to sort out some winners and losers. Money is being invested and it’ll take a few years to figure out what will stick and be useful (the new Googles, eBays, etc.).
By Devin on November 13, 2006 3:03 pm
“Personally, I just get tired of buzzwords to create hype from people who really have no idea what they are talking about.”
It is also true that these buzzwords seem to be thrown about as moneymakers, giving people the misconception that something new has been invented when really the functionality has been around for a long time already.
Sort of like this buzzword: “Web 2.0″
By Tom on November 13, 2006 3:45 pm
I agree with you there seems to be a lot of buzz being thrown around. Sometimes I think people just want the dot Com days back. Heck, Web 2.0 still hasn’t been pushed to it it’s full potential yet.
Web 3.0 or call it what you will, is kinda far from being there to start getting the public at large into it. Oh and your totally right, the article was a bit off on it’s facts.
By John Labriola on November 13, 2006 4:23 pm
Putting version numbers aside for a while, Web 2.0 offers no real value for users. How non computer-savvy people you think might get excited about tags, RSS, and “the social”? How many daywalkers smirk when they hear “blogsphere”? How many regular ones you think digg digg? (yeah yeah, pun intended).
I’m enjoying the Web’s current phase just as much as Scrivs is, but come to think about it, I’m getting tired of buzzwords stuffed down my throat. Flickr, and very selected few other sites, are the ones we should bow in respect to. Those showed Web 1.0 people how things should be done.
Current trends are simply reinventing the wheel. I think we need better wheels, not better manufacturing methods.
By Rami Kayyali on November 13, 2006 7:31 pm
Hey, the problem that still exists with web 2.0 is getting all of these disconnected tech-evangelists and vc’s to come down to earth and clue in with the reality of the web. When people say things like “broadband is prevalent” and “tagging is a convention” you know that someone has been drinking the kool-aid. I think we need at least 5 more years just to double the number of users that understand semantics and all of the “cool” web technology we’ve been seeing. We might be ready to play with new technologies and ideas, but we are most definitely not ready for a major revolution on the web that we can somehow label as “web 3.0.”
Looks like the best thing to do is ignore that New York Times article because it’s just hot air that’s making bloggers throw around more meaningless buzzwords; the noise-to-signal ratio is obviously very high.
By Montoya on November 21, 2006 1:51 pm