Funding trends in Silicon Valley are getting faster. A hot startup or a leading VC will blaze a path which others quickly follow. VC's and startups collaborate to simplify the description of a company's concept. Valley startups develop 10-second elevator pitch to quickly explain their business to VCs. Examples of such include:"Social Network for dogs" - Dogster.
"SaaS-based customer support" - HelpStream.
"User-Generated business reviews" - Yelp.
The Web 2.0 wave is subsiding and the current en vogue companies are of the green variety. However, a new consumer Internet trend is picking up where Web 2.0 left off. The current moniker gaining traction is the "distributed web". I am hopeful that this pedestrian name is replaced with a more interesting label. I am proposing an alternative name for Web 3.0 -"every web".
The "distributed web" supports the idea that mobile computing will expand at an exponential rate requiring that consumer Internet companies provide content and services for desktop and mobile web platforms. "Mobile web" is another term being used for Web 3.0. The only problem with the term "mobile web" is that suggests a pure mobile play. "Every web" works as it suggests that the web is everywhere you want it to be - with apologize to Visa. It also sounds a lot cooler than "distributed web".
Mobile applications can take advantage of the inherent location-based, always on usage of mobile phones. At the same time, screen, keyboard, and connection-speed limitations require special consideration for mobile applications. As 3G and 4G networks become more widely available, the connection-speed limitations will become less impactful. However, the screen and keyboard limitations will continue to provide design and UI challenges for the foreseeable future.
Twitter is a good example of a Web 3.0 success story. Combining web and mobile technologies, Twitter has gained a huge, loyal following. More impressively, Twitter is becoming a platform where other startups are setting up shop. Expect to see some big funding in the "every web" space. Over the course of the next two years, the "every web" will deliver on the promise that mobile computing offers.
1 comments:
Great insight! Web2.0 or “cloud computing” is transitioning from a delivery mechanism for business applications to a business application communication platform. The name Web3.0 works. At Helpstream we refer to it as the Social Web, and a great thing happens when you expose a business application to it.
In the web2.0 world, communication over the Internet still happened primarily by email or you’d get some type of alert delivered as part of the application. You could fire up chat and send SMS messages, but generally business software applications were not enabled to facilitate communication as part of their supported process.
In the mobile web, people text, chat, tweet, browse, and (of course) email so business applications need to catch up. This is what’s behind the transformation of Web2.0. For example, Helpstream web-enables customer service and support processes. Service teams post permission-based content on a web application, and subscribers get SMS, RSS, desktop feeds. Customers can comment on what they read, ask questions. Other subscribed users can join the conversation – partners, sales reps, product development -- via their iPhone if they want. Privacy and access authorities and innovations in user scoring and credibility ratings make this possible in the Web3.0 world. Need to notify customers in mass about a critical product issue? Tools like Twitterfeed are easily configurable to do that, or offer category-level content subscriptions via an RSS feed.
Mobile computing and web technologies have evolved a great deal since the first Web2.0 companies entered the market 10 or so years ago. So have people. In the 13+ years since companies like Amazon and eBay launched, people are simply that much more comfortable conducting business and interacting over web. Businesses that want to service them will need to respond, and with many companies already adopting Web3.0 technologies we’re certain to see even newer and more exciting developments ahead.
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