Web Marketing Strategy Update

Whilst many people are still trying to understand what Web 2.0 is, the other day I came across an interesting post, How To Define Web 3.0 by Steve Spalding at How To Split An Atom.

In it he attempts to predict the defining aspects of the next phase in the evolution of the Internet, which is being tagged Web 3.0.

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Here are a couple of excerpts:

Definition [Web 3.0]: Highly specialized information silos, moderated by a cult of personality, validated by the community, and put into context with the inclusion of meta-data through widgets.

And:

Analyzing Web 3.0 is an exercise in understanding how human beings naturally consume data. We tend to gravitate towards specialized information silos for the majority of our information. That’s why we have television stations instead of one massive GooTube, and why we buy magazines about our favorite subjects instead of white sheets containing random news articles.

Web 1.0 lacked context, Web 2.0 lacked interoperability, Web 3.0 will be a web where websites become web services and access to any information you desire is no more difficult than installing a widget onto your website.

Squidoo is the brain child of popular and latterly philanthropic marketer Seth Godin, who’s also the author of a small pile of marketing books containing some pretty revolutionary thinking.

The idea is that anyone can set up a “Lens” on any topic they choose, sharing information for the purposes of building reputation, drawing traffic to other websites, making money or just for fun.

Simply a web page with a hip new name, besides giving you space to write on your subject of choice, a lens has modules to optionally add stuff like RSS feeds, items from Amazon, polls, photos from Flickr, etc.

A lot of time has now passed, but if I remember correctly, the basic premise in setting up Squidoo was that search engines would never be able to deliver what people want, and that the people themselves would make a better job of it by voting with their feet as it were, from amongst Lenses created by others knowledgeable on a subject.

Here’s the Oct 2005 post on Seth’s blog with the free ebook download introducing Squidoo and explaining the concept of “everyone’s an expert.”