Jason Calacanis joins the fray, with his attempt to define Web 3.0. With typical Calacanis modesty, his is of course the ‘official’ definition.

A flurry of comments on his blog, and on others such as Alex Iskold’s and recent podcast victim Brad Feld’s, would suggest that Jason’s definition is not being wholeheartedly embraced.

I don’t much like it either, remarking to Jason that;

“an interesting premise, but I’m not sure I agree. Surely the ‘Web 3.0′ digg, Wikipedia or whatever is one in which the behaviour and reaction of site visitors is put to use, rather than expecting ‘expert’ users to actively intervene more often?

Web 2.0 - whether you like the name or not - has given us much. We’ve seen the rise of participation, but that participation has tended to exist in a growing number of relatively isolated islands. My behaviour on digg does not reflect upon my use of Wikipedia, etc. With growing semantic manipulation of the content and its use by people (clickstreams and more), we open up new opportunities to enrich the user experience with reference to previous uses by yourself and by others.

This isn’t the ‘Semantic Web’, but it’s brought about by a pragmatic integration of ’semantic technologies’ with the approaches and crowds of ‘Web 2.0′.

And it’s not a long way off, either.”

and to Alex;

“I think Jason’s right in so far as he suggests that people have more of a role to play in Web 3.0… or whatever we end up calling it.

Where I think he’s wrong, though, is in suggesting that those people will necessarily have to actively participate as his post suggests.

Instead, it will be the behaviour of people that enriches the experience still further for them and for others; what did they search for, what did they do with the result, how did they move from one resource on one site to a different resource on another, etc?

Battelle’s ‘Database of Intentions’ is an intermediate step on the way to a Web of Intentions… and semantic technologies are right at the heart of it.”

The more I think about this area (and yes, coffee and cake with Mr Davis is a critical part of the thinking process), the more persuaded I become that people lie at the heart of the next step. People, their behaviour, their perceptions of the resources with which they interact, the contexts in which they behave, and the networks of which they are a part. Semantic technologies such as RDF offer a compelling way to manage all of the resulting data, and to deliver powerful applications as a result.

Technorati Tags: Semantic Web, Talis, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

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