Web 3.0 - The Visually Integrated Web

While my first name is not Tim, (neither O’reilly nor Berners Lee) I wanted to offer my own version of the next rev of the web. Commonly referred to as Web 3.0 but deserving of another, better name, Tim O’Reilly and his colleagues have developed quite a conversation around semantics and ontologies that they suggest will form the foundation for Web 3.0. While I agree that ontologies and semantics will be core to machine-to-machine interaction and certainly to the web, I am less convinced that it will herald in Web 3.0. Semantics is somewhat like the Year of The Network and the Brooklyn Dodgers. It will definitely come but not “next year.”

In a somewhat technical post on Web 3.0, Alex Iksold on the ReadWriteWeb blog offers this interesting suggestion for Web 3.0 (see his diagram since I am not good at graphics):

"The net effect will be that unstructured information will give way to structured information - paving the road to more intelligent computing....So bringing together Open APIs (like the Amazon E-Commerce service) and scraping/mashup technologies, gives us a way to treat any web site as a web service that exposes its information. The information, or to be more exact the data, becomes open. In turn, this enables software to take advantage of this information collectively. With that, the Web truly becomes a database that can be queried and remixed."

I wanted to pick up on Alex's excellent thread and offer my own view on web 3.0. I think web 3.0 will encompass 3 elements:

1. Visualization
2. Integration
3. True Multi-Platform

Visualization – The web is still a very texty place. While web 2.0 has brought an abundance of visual media sites such as YouTube, Flickr and the like, the fundamental medium is still text based. Search and monetization are all very textual. This is true of the outer rims of the web as well, such as SMS (text messaging) and the PC desktop, where we are still married to the folder metaphor borrowed from the physical file cabinet of yesteryear. Google’s ad and web navigation is completely text based. There are attempts at video ads but they are still a while off from taking hold.

Web 3.0 will herald new visual expressions, visual search, and new user interfaces. Google's recent acquisition of Gapminder's Trendalyzer software is a foray in that direction. Benchmark's investment in Zlango is also a nod in this direction since icon based messaging across platforms (more on that below) is the visualization of Web 3.0 as opposed to textiness of mobile 1.0.

Integration – Much like integration followed the client-server era, it will follow the web 2.0 era. Our current web application environment is more like disparate islands in a vast sea rather than an integrated web. If you look at the Web 2.0 landscape you see Islands of Social Networks, Islands of video sites, Islands of Games, Islands of Photo sites, Islands of Blogs, Islands of communication (Email and IM and VOIP). Aside from some point to point widget integration, these islands rarely interconnect. Additionally, within each island, you have communities where the neighbors do not talk to each other.

This is how Sramana Mitra aptly describes the islands on her blog about Web 3.0:

“Web 2.0 has been a nichy phenomenon with hundred and thousands of microcap efforts addressing one of the Cs, lately, Community being the most popular force, producing companies like MySpace, Facebook, Piczo, Xanga, and Flixster.”

The perfect example is IM where open interconnect protocols have been slow to roll out but it is true of photos and videos and other content as well. I am locked into Kodak Easy share because I started there and I can’t even really use my photos there ad hoc with other external services because they are not integrated. Why can’t I take my purchased digital assets with me from game to game? Imagine, if I told you that if you sign up for a Verizon cell phone you could not call someone who was on Cingular? Perposterous? That is the world of IM. What if you could not take your film into any 1 hour photo store but you needed to go back to the same store or the store you bought the film from? What if I bought fancy chess pieces and I could not take them to any park chess table?

We think we have open platforms such as mashups but it is a mirage. Digital assets are not portable and it is both a back end integration problem and an openness of the “site” creators. Semantics is, obviously, a part of the solution to this. It will enable disparate systems to talk clearly but it is the second part in my view. We need both technologies and platform openness on the individual digital asset level to accomplish this.

This is also related to identity. How come I do not have integrated access to both my content and communication? Isn’t that what the internet promised? From a user perspective, think of this problem as single-sign-on plus control and portability of my digital assets. But that is the front end view. Web 3.0 will bring the integration layers that enable this.

Multi Platform – There has been a lot of talk about Web and Mobile experiences and the differences between them. Frankly, I think that Mobile’s platform backwardness is holding this up. The balkanized operating systems and unending porting to 1000+ cell phone platforms is hampering realizing the dream of gaining two way access and usage to cloud-based assets on my mobile phone, with a good user experience (not to mention carrier closed mindedness). This is also partly a prediction on HTML and WML convergence. And, these will happen in web 3.0. There are enough start ups working on a myriad of virtualization schemes and the carriers (outside the USA) are beginning to open up. Applications will begin to emerge that offer a seamless and satisfactory experience across platforms. I look at my kids and how they use phones and the web and it is way different from how I use it. They want these experiences shared across platforms and do not understand when I tell them that mobile is still a more limited platform. Windows, BREW and java are all a nuisance for them in the same way they do not really see a need for windows on the PC. For my kids and their friends it is simple: Have browser will travel. They are even willing to have a download like they need for high quality games like WoW and RuneScape and they will download it to the phone. They want their IM buddies on their phone and texting on the PC. They want their photos and their files on their home computer and school computer without having to pack them on a necklace or key chain and take them and they want them on their phone. Basically, they want a seamless great and transferable experience in both places.

This is not a visionary view of the web 3.0 world. I am not a visionary. I get two looks at trends: looking at new deals and academic work as a VC and watching and listening to my kids at home (that is actually quite a good-sized focus group these days). Teenagers already want their web more visual and they will hit the workforce soon. Startups will move to provide more visual interaction and communication. I see it coming already. They will demand integration and with the fickleness of this generation, they will find their way to open and integrate data and sites. They don’t call it data. It is their digital life. They don’t want to hear that it is locked in a windows file folder or that they can’t move it from World of Warcraft to Runescape or from Snapfish to Flickr. And, they want it wherever they are: on the bus or in front of the PC. And guess what, they will get it soon because this is web 3.0: The Visually Integrated Web.