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.

Although very informative, it is a long post. The summary below should tell you if you’d be interested in heading over to read it in it’s entirety:

• Search engines will be replaced by smaller, specialized searchlets
• Search engines will be able to understand context through tagging and community interaction.
• Search “profiles” will become portable, allowing us to have the digital equivalent of body language.
• Natural language search will be improved once search engines have a stronger understanding of context.
• People search will become more important.
• Guided / Editorial search will be a stopgap where search engines still fail to provide relevance.

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.”

Personally I think it’s a flawed idea, because the member group will always be far too small to cover everything, people using Squidoo to position themselves as experts will not point you to competing experts in their field unless it involves financial reward, and many of the true experts will never join Squidoo anyway.

Although Squidoo comes across as egalitarian, virtuous (you can donate part or all revenues from your Lens to charity) and bordering on cuddly toy fluffy in its language, I can only see Lenses as a promotion tool. Perhaps I’m just not a “giving” enough person.

Anyway, I’m drifting. The point is Google loves Squidoo, and carefully planned Lenses bring you PR, backlinks and traffic. Between that and promoting products or affiliate programs directly on your Lens, Squidoo is a money-maker.

But now there’s another, newer place called Hubpages. It’s very similar to Squidoo. In fact, you’d probably be correct in saying it’s a copy.

But it’s got me wondering if Seth’s Squidoo story is going to be like that of Friendster creator Jonathan Abrams: First to market but almost eclipsed by newer rivals who copied the idea but did it better (”better” is of course, subjective. Perhaps I should have said, “more successfully”).

Is Hubpages better? Well, I guess that’s for you to decide. But since it’s faster and easier to use from a purely promotional perspective, and also seems to be getting some Google love, it has my vote. For now at least.