Web 3.0? Isn’t 2.0 Still In Beta?

November 13th, 2006

Technology Just when it seems like Web 2.0 is finally getting somewhere, some people say it’s over and are moving on to… Web 3.0. I guess the YouTube sale was the end of the line for some.

I can almost see some kind of “Wired… Tired” chart coming up that has stuff that’s already yesterday’s news.

Anyhow, the New York Times has a truly fuzzy, nonsensical idea of what Web 3.0 should be about: a truly “semantic” web in which all the data has meaning. The hope is that you could 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 a real answer.

I’m thinking that would be a nice thing, but there are so many more unfullfilled needs out there, that technologists could apply their efforts to. Instead of chasing after buzzwords and the next big thing, how about getting back to providing services based on what people actually want, or improving on stuff that we already have that is less than stellar. Computers are still a pain in the rear for the mainstream population.

Stop for a moment and think about how while everyone else was chasing niche retail online, Google went back and improved on the search engine, technology that most thought was already wrapped up with Yahoo! and MSN. And look where it is today.

As far as I’m concerned, we still haven’t gotten a bug fix for Web 1.0, and Web 2.0 is still in beta.

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