There is currently a wealth of discussion which uses the terms Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and more rarely Web 3.0. Wherever these terms are used, and whatever technologies are placed into the particular categories what is typically found is an analysis of how online (it is not limited to the “web”) technologies and behaviours have developed. Often there will be a discussion of where we are now and typically an attempt to determine future trends. That’s all there is, discussion, and some usually fairly vague attempt at classification, these terms do not yet have any broadly accepted definitions, though there is some emerging consensus, and they certainly don’t describe any new standards or new browsers.
Typically “Web 2.0″ is considered to be made up of websites and applications which have certain features shared by a number of currently successful sites. In a September 2005 article by Tim O’Reilly entitled What is Web 2.0 attempted to define some of the characteristics of Web 2.0 technologies. He identified sites such as Flickr and Wikipedia were part of “Web 2.0″, and compared them to their Web 1.0 “predecessors” Ofoto and Britannica Online respectively. Looking at those examples it is possible to see how there are common features such as:
- User generated / “owned” content.
- Easy automated interaction between sites via APIs, Feeds, RPIs etc.
- Community / Participation.
- Standards compliance.
- Separation of content from presentation.
- Some rights reserved licensing.
A common question is “How can we join in?”. And that is something that Sci7 has been helping companies with for some years now. Enabling users to add comments to sites, producing not only your latest articles in RSS (or other) feeds, but also your comments and perhaps search results via OpenSearch. Do you make the raw content product catalogue available to tech savvy customers and modern search engines in XML format so they can use it in the way that they want or do you force them through your own interface?
The barrier to getting involved in “Web 2.0″ is small, even adding comments and trackbacks to articles on a corporate website in a manner that “Bloggers” have been using for many years now is making an nod in the right direction. The very nature of Web 2.0 applications, enables small entities to rapidly place themselves right in the middle of things by providing a useful service eg. Pingomatic.com, or simply brining a collection of “Web 2.0″ applications together to create a new one greater than the sum of its parts.
Web 3.0
Often Web 2.0 discussions involve AJAX (explained below), and some AJAX applications are firmly in the Web 2.0 arena, such as those enabling live updates of RSS feeds or search results as new information becomes available. However what we see AJAX being used for is altogether more interesting, and might well be giving us a glimpse of what Web 3.0 will be about: Instantly responsive online applications, or perhaps more accurately: Apparently instantly responsive remote interactive applications.
Google Suggest is an example of an application where a remote application gives local PC like levels of interactivity.
Moving towards the point where online services become the norm, and the ultimate thin client that is the web-browser will become ever more capable of providing more users with access to the tools that they require.
Google Earth and Google Suggest are perhaps transitional applications which are giving us the first glimpse of what web 3.0 might offer. While true web applications function through a browser, but there are some emerging application which are way ahead of the curve, such as Google Earth and Skype which while closely integrated with the web, currently require dedicated client side applications to be run.
What is AJAX
AJAX, a term describing the use of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, was coined by Jesse Garret in February of 2005, in an online essay entitled “AJAX: A New Approach to Web Applications”. Since then the strict definition proposed by Garrett has been relaxed in common usage to cover online applications which typically have the following key characteristics:
- Personal computer like levels of interactivity with remote applications
- Standards compliant presentation
- Dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model
- Data interchange and manipulation using open structured data interchange formats
- Asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest
- Client side scripting binding everything together
Tracking
Web 2.0 requires smarter interpretation of statistics, polling AJAX applications, RSS feed readers and other services will result in various new types of traffic on your webserver. As these routes of getting your site / brand / message out become more important it may be necessary to revisit some of the more traditional ways of reporting traffic on websites, as more and more ways are provided for users to interact with data provided by an organisation producing meaningful web-stats becomes more of a challenge. Your webserver could be hit once by a site syndicating your content which could then cascade it on to many of its own users, perhaps along with your own advertising - though Google’s patent application Embedding advertisements in syndicated content if awarded and upheld could dampen uptake of such approaches (or at least limit you to using Google Ads in conjunction with them).