Web 2.0 + massively multiplayer = web 3.0?

With all the buzz about web 2.0 almost dying down again, many wonder what web 3.0 will bring. Markus Weichselbaum, founder of TheBroth, discusses the web-that-was and the web-that-might-be.

Web 3.0 is the semantic web, some claim. It is based on document structures that unlike HTML are able to indicate the logical relationships between objects of information, allowing for much smarter composite applications to provide easier, more transparent and organised access to “the world’s information”.

While I am certain that there are interesting and worthwile efforts underway towards a “semantic web”, I’m not convinced that this particular movement will be known to us as web 3.0. In the following article I’ll provide a brief history of the web and discuss some ideas of what web 3.0 could be like.

Web 1.0

Let’s recap where the web is coming from. Initially it was just a wonderous way of publishing information. Let’s call it the web 1.0. It was a one-way street - very much like a library, we were able to access static information. Somebody published a website or some web pages, maybe even updated it every now and then, and we could access it and read some text and view associated images.

The push of the people and how THEY wanted to use the web soon became apparent. Monsters such as geocities and angelcity sprung up, creating what we now often ridicule as the “My first homepage” look. It was the times of Netscape 3.0 and auto-playing MIDI-music, flashing fonts, guest books, animated backgrounds and by and large non-validating HTML. Those with a knack for technology would take part and create their first own homepage on these free services, and some of the first e-commerce sites sprung up, driven by the notion that “the future was online”. Yet, it wasn’t really bringing people together yet - in the web 1.0 era, everyone was on his own, creating a clear divide between content providers and end users.

Web 2.0

The world is shaped by people and by the way they do things, and the web was no exception. Enter web 2.0. In short, Web 2.0 and the associated technologies help to allow anyone to contribute and share information, write in a blog, and engage in social networking activities, even with comparatively little computer literacy.

So, with web 2.0, suddenly the web became a web for users, made with user created content. New, often free sites had exciting new features that would allow users to interact better and share their information freely. Web applications became more alive, and began to look and feel more like the software applications that people were used to from their local computers before venturing onto the internet. (Briefly, the use of Ajax, a javascript based technology, became more widespread and better supported in modern browsers. It allows webpages to feel more responsive to the user, updating sections and executing functions without the need to reload the entire page from the server.)

Blogging, the act of personal publishing of a diary on the web (”weblog”, or blog for short) took the world by storm. It become a word that people actually understood - a web log (or blog for short) was like a diary and so everyone could begin to tell the world what they had for breakfast or what they think of the war in Iraq (or of the web 3.0 - doh!). Add to this technologies like feed syndication, and we suddenly had a user-to-user type of information sharing.

Many sites picked up on the concept, giving the web 2.0 generation the distinct flavor of user-generated content, that is, content generated by users for users, with the emphasis on sharing files and information.

So where is web 2.0 now? Some sites managed to remain in or enter into the global consciousness, and they were able to create strong associations between their name and what they stand for. Let’s take a look at the current internet landscape, listing all the web entities that we now know so well, including many of the web 1.0 era. I’ll be using my very own personal associations here:

• Flickr.com = sharing photos
• YouTube = sharing videos
• eBay.com = auctions
• Google.com = search
• Myspace = user profiles
• Facebook = college life
• Amazon = books and shopping
• Digg = technology news site
• Wikipedia = online encyclopedia

These are just a few examples. Of course we all know that there is a microsoft.com and an apple.com, to name just a few examples, but which of these sites are we using on a daily basis in a web 2.0 sense?

Web 3.0 - or maybe just Web 2.x?

Let’s move on to Web 3.0. It’s just another buzz word and nobody really knows yet what web 3.0, if there ever is such a thing, is going to look like. If you look around, you will find many voices talking about high-brow ideas such as the semantic web, and they ponder whether the semantic web would take away some power of Google.com as the current kingpin of information hoarding finding.

Well, yours truly has been publishing on the web since more than a decade, and being the creator of a recent website, I’m happy to share my own thoughts on what web 3.0 could be about.

We have already seen the web move from 1.0 to 2.0, and the main difference was that the web has become a two-way street - it is no longer just a selected few that create content. Everyone can create content now. Web pages have become a lot more dynamic, adjusting and adjustable to each user’s personal preferences. Web pages have become more lively, and social interaction has been featured, facilitated and greatly improved.

The web is likely continue on this path, and we’ll see a blurring of the lines of what is a local application running on a local device (computer, mobile phone, video game console, toaster) and web application. My vision of the future web is one where the lines will blur between computers, applications, data, people, communication, information, entertainment, work and play. It’s all just going to be one big… yet-to-be-named interconnected something. Oh wait, there’s already a name for it, they call it the “internet”! Joking aside, only few doubt that, online, the lines will blur between things, entities, people and activies. Sending and receiving information will become one.

Let’s look at some examples. Microsoft had limited success with Xbox Live, its online gaming service for the original Xbox video game console. Only 10% of users could be lured to online gaming. In 2006, the situation is different. Now, on the Xbox 360 and with the increasing penetration of broadband access in our homes, online gaming has evolved dramatically. Last I heard was that more than 50% of all Xbox 360 owners use Xbox live. I’m not paid by Microsoft, but if you haven’t ever used Xbox live and played with real people, communicating via voice, and playing together in a team towards a common goal, then you don’t know what you’re missing, and you’d have good reason to be curious, try it out and see what the fuzz is all about.

What if, in the future, …

In the web 2.0 generation, web sites began to do amazing things to break through the limitations of their underlying protocol and markup language (http and HTML, respectively).

What if websites were to subscribe to the “Live” aspect, the multiplayer aspect, the massively multiplayer aspect even? What if in the future, users on the same site, or perhaps even on different sites, are beginning to interact in real time? What if the whole world had means to collaborate, work together, be creative, all in real-time, on web sites?

In a way, this would be like “Web 2.0 meets massively multiplayer online gaming”. I don’t like the word gaming here as it suggests something that is only for entertainment, and ultimately, inconsequential. Rather, I believe that true value and immediate person-to-person interaction will be possible, be it on a commercial, scientific, entertainment, or personal level.

Our own contribution to the growing number of new web 2.x - or shall we dare call it web 3.0 - applications is TheBroth, The Global Mosaic. This is a web site where you can collaborate in real time with other users from around the world, dragging tiles to create mosaic-like artworks with other users in the room. It fulfills the paradigm described in this article, namely web 2.0 with all the trimmings, user generated content, blogs, a social networking system, chat, forum, sharing, rating, commenting, you name it… but it adds another dimension by being LIVE (as seen on the live player map, active rooms page, site map…). You make friends, you work together, but unlike web 2.0 where you only leave footprints of your work to show that you’ve been there, by uploading files, blogging, commenting, TheBroth - and, I believe, many more sites in the future - will be known primarily for their real-time, collaborative user interaction.

The web matures

We don’t know yet whether there will be another noticable paradigm shift that yet again will give a new moniker to a new type of web site. Maybe from now on the web will continue to develop in a rather fluid manner and we may not see another discrete change as seen with what we now, in hindsight, label web 2.0.

What we do know is that more and more users come to the internet, and with ADSL2+ and cable more and more users have high speed internet access that is now fast enough to make online video a serious threat to TV ratings. New internet users that are now coming to the web, uninfluenced by the web-that-was, expect services to be timely, uninterrupted, error free, and above all, intuitive to use, with a friendly and inviting look that makes the term “user friendly website” a pleonasm, a thing of the past, so much so that in the web 3.0 era, by means of evolution and the pressure to adapt, only quality sites that really are user-centric and user-friendly will prevail. One can only hope.