I went for a walk yesterday in the spring sun of Södermalm with Carl Waldecrantz from Superstrikers. We discussed Web 3.0 and the dangers of that concept. Everyone wants to claim it. I’ve heard it several times now. F&B for one mentioned it for their new site which has been “coming soon” now for longer than it takes to age a Bordeaux. First of all, one of the principals of web 2.0 is to get a beta out quick and work on it as you go, using user feedback to aid development. If F&B 3.0 would really be 3.0, are we then leaving the perpetual beta methodology to return to the days of “under construction”? Hardly.
The term Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O’Reilly during a conference in 2004. In the initial brainstorm during the conference the following was formulated to get a sense of what Web 2.0 really meant:
Web 1.0 –> Web 2.0
DoubleClick –> Google AdSense
Ofoto –> Flickr
Akamai –> BitTorrent
mp3.com –> Napster
Britannica Online –> Wikipedia
personal websites –> blogging
evite –> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation –> search engine optimization
page views –> cost per click
screen scraping –> web services
publishing –> participation
content management systems –> wikis
directories (taxonomy) –> tagging (“folksonomy”)
stickiness –> syndication
I have yet to see such a list being presented on what Web 3.0 is going to be. And that such a list would be dictated by an ad agency is preposterous. I will elaborate on why in a minute.
F&B are not alone in trying to claim the 3.0 flag. Fredrik Heghammar of Perfect Fools said in a December 2007 jury quote in Resumé that “Farfar beat F&B to the punch for the first 3.0 solution. They’ve set an example” (in my free translation from Swedish). But that solution for Björn Borg, which can be seen here, is not 3.0. It’s not even 2.0. It’s a great 1.0 website, and in that context they really have set an example for good Flash work.
BUT, and this is important, there is nothing wrong with what Farfar did in that solution. It’s probably what the client wanted. It’s possibly what the public was ready for. It’s reasonably useful unlike the award winning IKEA’s Drömkök, (very, very 1.0) which i find pretty to look at but utterly useless, slow, and irritating if you actually want to buy a kitchen (trust me, I’m trying to buy a kitchen right now, and IKEA’s site almost made me throw my Macbook AIR into orbit). What I’m saying here is that Farfar did a great job for Björn Borg. But it’s not 3.0. It shouldn’t be. Web 3.0, whatever it is, will grow from entrepreneurial start ups. The next wikipedia, the next Flickr, the next Twitter. It will be exposed to great risk during it’s adolescence. Many projects will crash and burn. This is not something that ad agencies should expose their clients to. It would be irresponsible. Ad agencies have a mass market for the most part. Not a market of early adopters. Web 2.0 should be coming of age though, and most agencies are still doing 1.0. So go out on a limb and make some fast, mashable, sociable, sharable, collaborative stuff for some clients before you start jabbering on about 3.0.
Until then, let me start up a discussion on 3.0 by making a first couple of distinctions like the ones above:
Web 2.0 ––> Web 3.0
User generated content ––> User generated content bundling
Sharing songs ––> Sharing playlists
Favorite bloggers ––> Favorite editors/syndicators
Feedreaders ––> Sensemaking apps