Web 2.0 - Must be an upgrade…

What is this version number jazz all about? Is the internet getting an upgrade? Should I install a patch so that I can run the latest version of internet? I have heard it all and most of it wrongly from nerds.

All good things require innovation to stay current and adapt to user demands. When revenue and market competition become factors innovation and development become faster, more prominent, and necessary. The Web X.0 version number label simply refers to a highly generalized method in which innovation forces a change in how the internet is used to generate revenue.

Web 1.0

The originally public available internet offered innovation through convenience. This was the age of the electronic storefront. You could buy everything online from groceries to cat food to ebola. It was a concept that sounded great and worked well in its infancy, because there are certain time consuming aspects of commerce people would rather buy from home. In this regard certain Web 1.0 outlets still exist and will likely always exist.

The problem is that there are certain aspects of a market economy that people prefer to spend time away from home investigating. It is next to impossible to convince people it is necessary to adopt pets, cure disease, shop for food, and solve all entertainment needs from a computer miles away from reality. People are not going to suddenly become xenophobic and fear reality merely to meet the demands of an emerging economic shift that could hardly qualify its existence beyond that of a mere trend. To make things worse is that many corporate plans ignored market research in favor a faster entry into a market with artificial market share. The result is known as the internet balloon, the dot bomb era, or the complete loss of reason. Web 1.0 can be summarized as the retail web.

Web 2.0

The purpose of an electronic medium is not solely to provide a retail marketplace if a marketplace in the real world has more to offer. So people had to rethink how to make money. The money will always be there to extract, but now if its painfully obvious that people simply won't give it to you merely for a website and shopping cart software unless the product is compelling. Innovative people, many of whom did not even originally intend to make money, realized that the internet was a great way to serve information.

Many new information services sprang up such as social networks, information sharing tools, free online games, and so forth. The idea quickly become obvious that capturing the time and attention of a computer user is a market worth money. To capture this new market many new server-side languages were created and many new businesses sprang to life who did little more than provide a repository for serving information. In summary Web 2.0 is providing information service where revenue is generated from the marketing of a user's experience. This is the present.

Web 3.0

The next generation of internet services will be called the semantic web. The semantic web will build on the concepts paved by Web 2.0 by increasing data services through a more complete understanding and processing of linguistics and human communication. The immediately conceived technological method of performing lingustic processing is through the use of ontology languages and an emphasis on proper design structure.

It is not immediately known how Web 3.0 will translate into revenue generating services, but the solutions are not hard to imagine. Consider search engines that are capable answering questions or deliver desired results instead of merely keyword searches. Consider how much more accurate advertisement placement techniques can be advanced. Consider how retail goods can be suggested to the correct people at the correct times for targeted and accurate selling. These ideas are merely the tip of an uniformed iceberg.

Web 4.0

Internationalization is the ultimate goal of Sir Tim Berners Lee vision of the internet. Internationalization will build entirely on the foundations provided by the semantic web. Most immediately internationalization refers to the translation of linguistic phrases with accuracy to the intent of the phrase's context opposed to merely a translation of the vocabulary. This will build to allow the possiblity of inter-industry communication. Consider the possibilities for increased revenue if a translation scheme allows an electrical engineer to communicate directly with jargon to a cardiologist for the proper planning of a medically advanced pacemaker device. Now consider the possibilities of inter-industry communication across different language classes and the marketing capabilities following such.

Web 5.0

Could this be the final frontier? Who knows. It is too early to determine what will exist so far into the future. We will have to wait and see where where marketing and creative revenue generation take us when combined with previously described technological concepts. Ultimately, it is the ability to make money that will determine the migration path of future development.