Just when we were getting used to the idea of Web 2.0, along comes Web 3.0. I just read a piece about it by Joe Marchese in his Online Spin column titled “MySpace, Facebook and Google: Racing For Web 3.0.”
Wikipedia describes Web 3.0 as “the future of the World Wide Web,” noting that many “technologists, journalists, and industry leaders have used the term … to hypothesize about a future wave of Internet innovation.
Think of all this in terms of Captain Kirk and his crew going boldly out into space, searching for what is yet undiscovered. In this case, however, if nothing can be found, it will simply be invented.
Marchese reports that everyone from Google® to Facebook® to MySpace® is launching new technology to make social networking more social than ever. What you choose to share will simply follow you around on Web 3.0.
I agree with him that most of us living on Main Street, USA on Web 2.0 are hard pressed to keep up. The question now, I guess, is just how social do we have to be?
I blogged about this a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. remains more a nation of voyeurs than the creators on Web 2.0. Other nations have a much higher percentage of folks creating actual content on the Internet than we do. But it is indeed a World Wide Web. Soon, Web 3.0 will be the new jargon du jour. Sacre Blue!
During the Cold War we worried about the missile gap. Now we might have to start worrying about the social gap.
I’m not the only person here at Video Professor experimenting with various social media. Personally, I’m really getting into Flickr.com and Linkedin.com®. There are other new social sites, the hottest and latest, is Fubar.com. I’m not a fan of that one, but that’s me. You barely register and within seconds people are following you in cyber land. How do I know? I receive e-mails telling me this. Some of it feels a tad creepy. However, to Fubar.com’s credit, they have very good privacy settings.
Ultimately all of us will have an ever-increasing multitude of ways to express ourselves on the Web. A few are always way ahead of the power curve when it comes to the proverbial cutting edge. Then there’s the big chunk of us in the middle who are still dipping our toes in the water. O.K., our whole foot. And so far, the water’s fine. However, 20 percent of Americans still don’t even have access to a computer, that’s 60 million people!
Is a new class structure evolving in the world? Not based on socio-economic background, but computer savvy? It seems to look that way.
This is all something we pay very close attention to here at Video Professor, and if it’s hot, our production team is likely working on a way for you to learn more about it.
To paraphrase an old saying, the more things change, the more things change!
-John
John W. Scherer
John W. Scherer, CEO & founder, Video Professor, Inc.
Share your thoughts with me at ceo@videoprofessor.com
