Nova Spivack on Web 3.0

Confirming that the ‘Web 3.0’ meme is inextricably linked to product hucksterism, Nova Spivack offers up his ‘best official definition’, explicitly reprising Jason Calacanis’ similarly heavyhanded official definition, that I explored here. Once again, a impresario is positing a shiny new web in which his patent nostrum is the quintessential centerpoint of a glorious unfolding future:

[from Minding the Planet: Web 3.0 — The Best Official Definition Imaginable]

[…]

Web 3.0, in my opinion is best defined as the third-decade of the Web (2010 - 2020), during which time several key technologies will become widely used. Chief among them will be RDF and the technologies of the emerging Semantic Web. While Web 3.0 is not synonymous with the Semantic Web (there will be several other important technology shifts in that period), it will be largely characterized by semantics in general.

Web 3.0 is an era in which we will upgrade the back-end of the Web, after a decade of focus on the front-end (Web 2.0 has mainly been about AJAX, tagging, and other front-end user-experience innovations.) Web 3.0 is already starting to emerge in startups such as my own Radar Networks, but will really become mainstream around 2010.

I have to say that I would like to play with Spivack’s new shiny Twine app, independently of the Web 3.0 mumbo jumbo.

Pointer from Richard McManus, who is also unmoved by the Web 3.0 psychobabble:

I should note that Nova’s definition of web 3.0 is self-serving, because his new product Twine is an “intelligent web” product that uses semantics. Also I am not a proponent of continuing the version numbers - just as ‘dot com’ is the term for the first era of the Web, and ‘web 2.0’ the second, there will be a new term that bubbles up at the right time to describe the next era (perhaps 2-3 years from now).

The people that will invent new stuff that will leapfrog Web 2.0’s social revolution will not be web 2.0 retreads, but radical newbies: five girls in a rock band in an Illinois high school now, or some guy in South Korea working on 3D games, or a loose collective of Estonian graphic designers that invent a composite document metaphor. They will call it whatever is on their minds, not Web 3.0.