Bling, Bing, the Wiki’s Dead

So I went out and got myself a domain. FlacksRevenge.com (the very URL you are now parked on).

Get it? PR guy turns media critic. Clever, right?

Started a blog of the same name. So far, so good. Time to build traffic and an audience.

What’s this, you say?  My blog needs bells and whistles? It needs Web 2.0 bling like tag clouds, widgets, and so on? That is, it is no longer enough for me to have a simple Web soapbox, my blog needs to be a social networking-enabled, Diggable, tagable Web 2.0 application? 

(As if it were not hard enough to just come up with all the interesting topics needed to meet the objectives of paragraph 2). 

Like senses that become inured to persistent unchanging stimuli, the hive mind quickly tires of the same buzz and no sooner does Web 2.0 catch on in a big way then it is time to move on. If Web 2.0 were great, 3.0 must be better right? And now it must be time for 3.0, since we have been buzzing about 2.0 for awhile. 

Web 3.0 has something to do with the semantic Web (Wikiepedia Definition). And this has something to do with building intelligence and structure into the ideas and information on the Web. 

Blogging caught on in a big way because it is light and easy. Web 2.0 added some intriguing elements and also some tech overhead. Still, the principles of keeping things light and loosely coupled prevailed. 

My early impressions of Web 3.0 are that it is neither light nor loosely coupled. The technology and ideas do not easily propagate. Can anyone offer me a description of Web 3.0 that is as easy to digest or elegant as “Read/write Web” or the “Web as a social computing platform,” ideas that typify Web 2.0 and separate it from Web 1.0? Can anyone explain to me how Web 3.0 technology will propagate as quickly as tags, widgets, Ajax and RSS have?

We risk killing with technology “kindness”  the wonderful ability of blogs and Wikis to free up information and ideas and connect people.

My advice: keep it light.

Comments

[Alan Morrison]

1) Shorthand for Web 3.0 is the "machine readable Web".
2) No, it's not going to have a quick payoff, but that's because the goals are much more ambitious.
3) You're too impatient. Who cares if it's not the next AJAX? Sure the obstacles to the Semantic Web are considerable, but give people like Berners-Lee and Ralph Hodgson of TopQuadrant credit for some heavyweight thinking and R&D. Sure, it could be a decade or more before we truly substantial benefits, but that's the way real R&D happens--in fits and starts, over decades.