We are entering a new phase in the evolution of the web, and it’s not “Web 3.0”.
The phrase “Web 3.0” is generally used to refer to the semantic web. That phrase in itself typically needs some explanation so for the purposes of this article I’ll use the definition of a web that provides meaning instead of content. While I fully agree that this is happening, and I think it’s happening faster than many would have you believe, the new phase we are entering is bigger than that. Much bigger.
We are at an interesting time in the history of the Web. While many people have been nearly blinded by the speed at which new technologies have been being released for the past few years, those that have their eyes open are seeing some interesting things begin to happen. There are a number of technologies that are all maturing at around the same time that when combined, allow us to do things that have been purely theoretical up until now. This combination of technologies allow us to create truly great user experiences by creating interfaces that show the user what they want to see and in the way they want to see it. How is this different than what we’ve been doing already? Give me a minute or two and I’ll tell you.
What am I talking about?
The technologies that are all coming of age are in multiple different categories including semantic markup (RDF, OWL, SMIL, etc.), advanced / intelligent search capabilities (Bing, Wolfram|Alpha, FAST etc.), social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) and RIA frameworks (Flash, Flex, Silverlight etc.). Just think of the possibilities when these technologies are all used together. It is now possible to create an application that knows who the user is and what they are likely to be interested in (Social Media), knowledge of not only that content exists but what that content means (semantic markup), the ability to find content not only with keywords but with meaning (advanced search) and the ability to display all this in an interactive natural way for the user (RIA frameworks). This allows us to create applications that are highly relevant to the users wants and needs, which is a big step beyond today’s customized applications.
Public Uses
The possible implementations on the public web are limited only by your imagination, time and budget. One example that comes to mind could be some sort of social media aggregator that goes beyond what has been seen to date. Something that searches all of your networks, attempts to derive meaning from each tweet, post, fan, poke and whatever else your networks do. It could then condense all of that information to provide you with trending topics and attitudes, general attitudes & groupings of friends, maybe create a 3D mind-map style view of how all of your friends know each other. I’m sure with just a few minutes of thinking, each of you can come up several uses of this kind of knowledge.
Intranet Uses
This combination of technologies not only works on the public web, but can be even more powerful when used on a company Intranet. A typical mid to large sized company will have multiple systems in place that currently don’t know anything about each other. At the very least they will probably have an email application and a document repository of some sort. Many business will also have some combination of CRM, ERP, CMS and several others. Throw in domain specific knowledge which is typically in some form of relational database and you can have quite a large number of separate systems that most often have no knowledge of each other.
While it is no small task, it is possible to bring all of these separate systems together into a single interface that has knowledge of who the user is, what accounts / customers / projects they are interested in, what they have permission to see and what all of the related pieces are. This system could even be built in such a way as to increase visibility into the system by exposing data that may have been previously hidden through abstraction or by displaying related items throughout the system whenever an item is viewed. You could even improve workflows by creating forms or views that span multiple systems. Now, most of this is possible without using the newer technologies, but if you do use them, you can provide even more value for your users.
What’s Next
Well, we need to build these kinds of sites. The technology is there and ripe for the usage, now we need people to come up with some novel applications of these technologies. Let me know when you find them as I’m sure they are already being built. Who knows, maybe I’ll build one myself.
