Why Is It Still Web 2.0? - Alexia Tsotsis

Tsotsis attends Web 2.0 Summit and wonders why we haven’t started to adopt the term Web 3.0, which she associates with Reid Hoffman’s big data ideas.

Well, for one reason, six dozen other attempts to define Web 3.0 have sputtered and died like the attempt by Jason Calacanis to say that what he was up to at Mohalo was Web 3.0 or the many efforts to say that the semantic web is Web 3.0.

The reality is this:

I personally feel that Web 2.0 has a long way to play before we can advocate jumping onto some new wave. Have we seen the full culmination of the social revolution going on? No, and I think it will be awhile before we do.

Personally, I feel the vague lineaments of something beyond Web 2.0, and they involve some fairly radical steps. Imagine a Web without browsers. Imagine breaking completely away from the document metaphor, or a true blurring of application and information. That’s what Web 3.0 will be, but I bet we will call it something else.

Whatever the cool kids call what they are doing when they shift the metaphor away from what we are doing now won’t be Web 3.0. The ones that invent the next thing won’t count back. They won’t even remember Web 1.0.

Next giant step: social operating systems, which will lead to social networks — and communication through them — becoming the central purpose of the web, not just a bunch of unintegrated applications.

Jason Calacanis: "Blogging Is Dead" & Why "Stupid People Shouldn't Write"

A few sound bites from Jason Calacanis delivered at yesterday’s RRW 2WAY Summit — I did not attend.

Dan Rowinski via

“Blogging is largely dead.”

“There are a lot of stupid people out there … and stupid people shouldn’t write.”

“There needs to be a better system for tuning down the stupid people and tuning up the smart people.”

[…]

Calacanis thinks that Web 3.0 will be the “Age of Expertise.”

Ok, Calacanis made his fortune building up a blog network — Weblogs, Inc. — and selling it to AOL, which has now also acquired Techcrunch and Huffington Post: a huge seething mass of blogs. Meanwhile Tumblr and Wordpress both have respectable growth rates.

But Calacanis thinks it’s dead. Maybe that because he’s running a content farm called Mahalo, and Google’s Panda — an effort to decrease the page rank of crappy, mass-generated content — has cut its traffic in half.

Maybe Calacanis justifies building Mahalo based on his premise that people are stupid anyway, so what the heck? But the combination of the ugliness of Mahalo and this painful, chip on the shoulder elitism is not good.

Jason — Please shut down Mahalo (or sell it off) and dedicate your considerable talents to something worthwhile. Launch was good, but yet another launchpad event? Can’t you find something more interesting?

And that Web 3.0 meme is totally tired. Doesn’t expertise always matter?

Here’s something Jason said about Web 3.0 over three years ago, and my response:

Stowe Boyd, Jason Calacanis On Web 3.0

I really don’t get the Web 3.0 meme, which I have seen introduced at least a dozen times by all sorts of people. Some have been advancing the term as a synonym for the semantic web, but others have put forward other definitions, usually as part of some ultimately fruitless marketing ploy to define a market niche and place their shiny new product smack in the middle of it.

That’s what Jason Calacanis appears to be doing.

I formerly read Jason’s blog avidly, but since he launched Mahalo he has become a monomaniac. Everything revolves around his new shiny product. And now, it seems, the future of the web does, as well:

Jason Calacanis, Web 3.0, the official definition.

Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.

Ahem… like the individuals that are building the Mahalo index, that sits above the existing web?

I personally feel that Web 2.0 has a long way to play before we can advocate jumping onto some new wave. Have we seen the full culmination of the social revolution going on? No, and I think it will be awhile before we do.

Personally, I feel the vague lineaments of something beyond Web 2.0, and they involve some fairly radical steps. Imagine a Web without browsers. Imagine breaking completely away from the document metaphor, or a true blurring of application and information. That’s what Web 3.0 will be, but I bet we will call it something else.

At least Jason’s natterings three years ago led me to start waving my hands at what has turned out to be the rise of liquid media, as typified by Apple’s iOS 5. I just wish Jason would jump aboard and build something shiny.

Mahalo Sideswiped By Google Search Tweaks

Kit Eaton, iFive: Google Tweak Hits Mahalo, Malware Android Apps, Yahoo Leaving Japan, Amazon Threatens Cal., Twitter Axes Apple Parody | Fast Company

Google adjusted its search algorithm last week to suppress content mills and promote quality web writing—and now, in direct response, Mahalo (which has reinvented itself as a “human powered search engine” but is essentially a content factory) has reduced its staff by 10% because of a “significant dip in … traffic and revenue.” 

Google is bailing with a shot glass as the towering waves of piss poor content threaten to swamp search. Meanwhile, our reliance on social connection as the root of meaning grows:

Stowe Boyd, Meaning Is The New Search

We will find everything through social relationships: what washing machine to buy, or the best Thai restaurant in Beacon NY, or the company that makes the horizontal corduroys. people that care about these issues, and to who we matter, will share meaning with us: they have beliefs that they can justify, also called knowledge.

Google is only the echo of our linking behavior, a second-order derivative of our combined gestures. But generally, we would be happier with fewer results from trusted sources, and the rise of social tools makes that almost as fast as Google search.

Google must plan to adapt to the social revolution or fall into the spam darkness.