Web 2.0 is dead, long live Web 3.0!
All mediums have their own design movements. Think art with minimalism, dadaism, surrealism, futurism etc. Think Architecture with Bauhaus, rennaissance, avant-garde, modernism, postmodernism etc. They all look with a different perspective to the design. For example from an emotional, functional, technical point of view. But could also be centered around a philosophy, vision or religion. Design needs a certain look at the object to be designed.
A design movement is not only the idea/vision behind it but also encompasses a visual design, development style and structural design. Every architectural movement can be defined in those 3 ways. So can the web design movements.
Phase 0: The web
The latest medium, the internet, is still fresh. First there was chaos upon it’s birth. People didn’t know what it was and where it would go to. They saw the power of connecting the information by links.
Phase 1: Usability – uniformity in information
Then the people began to see the chaos and wanted to bring some form and order to the web. A big influentual person from that era was Jacob Nielsen. He brought rules and suggestions on how to improve all the chaos and to make the web a more uniform place. Where you could find your information. He looked at it from an information and functional viewpoint. He brought order and a certain visual (bit boring) style.
Phase 2: Search – finding information
In the next phase it was all about finding the information. The web became large so you needed a search engine to find content on what you were searching. Search engines came like: Hotbot, Altavista, Lycos etc. But in the end simplicity won. Google became the defining search engine of this age. Search engines dictated how pages should look structural and content wise to be indexed. Certain looks helped indexing. It was the time of top menu, sidebar navigation and a big content field.
Phase 3: Rich Internet – bringing emotion to the web
Next there was an anti movement to the previous 2 movements. The internet was still a place of images and text. People wanted to experience the internet. With the advancement of Flash it was possible to create experiences in flash to bring accross feelings. It was mainly used as product placement in the experience economy. Key technology was flash but people were also creating RIAs in DHTML.
Phase 4: Web 2.0 – connecting people
This phase was about getting people to connect on the web. It was about finding like minded people while looking for content. As with design movements in other fields Web 2.0 also had a clear visual style and tech of choice although this was not present on all web 2.0 sites. The tech of this movement was AJAX for making the community finding and building more fluent. But in the end it was all about connecting people as a reaction to only connecting information.
Examples of this movement are Digg, Youtube, Flickr, Wiki, MySpace, del.icio.us etc.
Phase 5: “Web 3.0″ – new forms of presenting information
The next wave will all about information again. We lived long with text from top to bottom. The next wave will all be about presenting information in new ways that are not top to bottom. The technology will be flash again or SVG and javascript will take the next tech leap. (SVG is already working in browsers and combined with javascript capable of doing dynamic animations)
Want to see some examples of web 3.0? Check out Digg labs, infostethics and Gapminder (also look at ted video for last)
Phase 6: “Web 4.0″ – dissolving web vs desktop
This phase will all be about dissolving what is online and offline. The browser will dissappear. Apps will be on the forefront. What will be the defining technology is still uncertain. It will be about XML for information. But what will the defining background technology be for application development? HTML is not designed for applications. So what will it be? XAML of Microsoft, MXML of Adobe or XUL of Mozilla? This is still a battle to be fought. The open standard will win, and Adobe and Microsoft are already opening up their standards for others but they will be in control. I think XUL is the best option because no commercial institution is controlling it, but XUL is not yet mature… Adobe already has released a quick development platform with flex.
Google is also working on web 4.0. Creating apps on the web. If they are smart they will work onto XUL and SVG as an open development platform for their future apps providing some basic functionality libraries like flex. I don’t think they would like that Adobe and Microsoft will control this era. I think that is why Google is such a fan of Firefox. (Webkit does also already support some XUL)
A battle will be which apps will be offline and online. You need offline components to do work while you are not on the internet. Mozilla brings this with XULRunner. Adobe with Apollo. And Microsoft with WPF and unannounced tech for the promised OSX support.
A more accessible and attractive web
This last battle is still a battle between corporations so lets concentrate on web 3.0. Making information more accessible and more attractive. Enjoy the web 3.0 wave!
Related:
karmatosed Said,
August 9, 2006 @ 16:19
I think of web . anything as just evolution. The progress of moving more application based work online has been a simple natural one. Things grow up / develop as more uses are found and it becomes more useful. There are stages to go through – experiment / cutting back the out of control mass (making sense of a mass of information) / interaction (we are social species). I make a point to ignore . anything and just enjoy as more opening come in the industry and working it gets more pleasurable by each evolutionary phase.
Alex Said,
August 9, 2006 @ 17:37
I think you raise some good points and outline the evolution of the web rather well. I’m not sure if SVG or flash will take off or not, but presentation will be the next evolution I agree. The thing is, the amount of sites that have evolved to 2.0 is still a rather small percentage, yes it’s some of the more major players but I think it’s still a long way to go to see this sort of change. We’re still fighting the battle of accessibility and standardization. The web is such a jungle of mismatched technologies now, we have standards but the amount of people following them is rather low.
Apple’s push for web widgets, that’s already stepping into your 4.0, but the apple market share is so small who knows what effect that will have.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, but I think a lot of it is optimistic and wishful thinking. Personally I’d feel it was a revolution if a webmaster could put together a site according to the standards and have it display correctly in any major browser!
Danjo Said,
August 9, 2006 @ 17:42
Phase 0: I like how you describe this phase, it was a neat era.
Phase 1: Jakob Nielsen <— notice spelling. DID not come before the search engines. He came after, and *some* of his ideas were good, *others* were plain gaudy! I admit you said boring. To each their own interpretation, but he more often than not took things to the extreme and as you can see his presentation still sucks today. My oppinion both then and now.
He should NOT have become the usability *legend* he did, I admit I bought his book, but it was just one persons contribution. Because of his extremeness his views continue to *hurt* forward motion for some peoples presentations.
Phase 2: What do you mean “With Nielsens design patterns”??
It is not because the way a site looks that gets you ranked. It is the exact words that are spoken and how they are placed on the page. For example content before menu links. And this in fact is improved with CSS tricks that can place the Content in the source code before menu links but display it vice-versa on the website. I am sure Jakob would disapprove though.
I maintain “certain looks” do not influence search indexing a darn bit.
Very nice article and well written.. thanks.
Jurriaan Mous Said,
August 9, 2006 @ 18:17
@Karmatosed
Indeed. It is all an evolution. And mainstream people need a focus so they can join in the evolution. You just need to make clear what the next path to follow is for the masses. It is all about group thinking. You need a buzzword for people to join… But indeed, with every step and with every buzzword it gets more interesting.
@Alex
You are right. A lot of the web is still behind. But web 2.0 was the forefront of web design where all the thinking did happen. But I think we get the message and need to lay our thinking and attention elsewhere. The influences of web 2.0 will always be there for designers and will be incorporated into the next web movement. I think the new front lies elsewhere and web 2.0 lessons should still be incorporated into any webdesign.
And you are right about standards. We just need more strict browsers. When IE7 hits we should end some compatibility modes from the past. And bad accessible sites will loose their visitors by time by better designed pages. Just as how google has won the search engine war.
@Danjo
Hmm, I meant more that people would present content in better ways. For example one of Nielsens rules was that you describe where a links links to and not use the word ‘link’ or ‘go here’. And with looks I meant things like you need to have clear accessible content to be indexed. You could not display text in an image. (Which some webdevelopers did before they became aware of search engines)
But I removed the Nielsen design patterns sentence. It was indeed not entirely clear and did not add to the story.
Thanks for all the nice comments!
High on Life » Nuggets Said,
August 10, 2006 @ 8:33
[...] Web 2.0 is dead, long live Web 3.0! – Interesting piece on the evolution of web design movements. Includes some forecasts; looks like information design is on the rise… excellent! [...]
Blog Posible » TodavÃa no sabemos que es la web 2.0 y ya hablan de la web 4.0 Said,
August 10, 2006 @ 14:34
[...] Un tÃtulo algo sensacionalista el artÃculo Web 2.0 is dead, long live Web 3.0! pero merece la pena ser leÃdo. Es un breve repaso a la evolución de la Web, con los siguientes apartados (traducción libre del inglés): [...]
digital divide Said,
August 22, 2006 @ 4:21
what do you do with those on zero-point-zero?
370 children don’t have primary school education.
IN 2015, 5 billion people will not have personal access to the net (in any form). What are you going to do about it?
The Digital Divide Declaration is a Dead Document: prove me wrong, I dare you.
Jurriaan Mous Said,
August 22, 2006 @ 11:10
Well I don’t know yet. Unfortunately I am not in control of power/money/attention flows. As you can read in my ‘us religion’ posts I am in favor of a united and equal world and infrastructure.
I think our structure first has to change. For this to happen we need some changes of thinking I am describing in ‘us’ posts. But some things are already happening, like the $100 dollar laptop etc.
I don’t know what to do. My country is already giving as one of the most to countries that need some support to get back into the loop. But well what do I need to do myself because I don’t like to think in groups including countries that people happen to be in. I don’t have the money flow and power yet to do something… But my goal is to build this equal world and make some of my believes the truth so people share more. One of my first steps is this blog.
But I think it will get a lot simplier down the road. We need to take some basic steps first that affects our believes and our egocentric group thinking… And I think it can be done by going with the flow and redirect the flow in the right direction while you have more control of it. (people don’t like friction)
But thanks for this awareness post
There is indeed no balance in this world…
Domiziano Galia Said,
August 22, 2006 @ 15:29
What an interesting analisys! But, in the end… what web x.0 have we to wait for cybersex?
Jurriaan Mous Said,
August 22, 2006 @ 17:06
There is no need for cyber when smart match sites could match you to the real thing with same state of mind
Interesting dutch version that uses AI: http://www.paiq.nl: connects p with q with AI.
Andrea Belardi | Comunicazione creativa » Blog Archive » Il web 2.0 e’ morto? Dal web 3.0, 100 bit e gira a destra per il web 4.0 Said,
August 25, 2006 @ 16:38
[...] Via Massimo, sembra che da jurmo.us, dopo aver dichiarato morto il web 2.0, siano gia’ pronti per il web 3.0 per poi puntare spediti (fase 6) al web 4.0. [...]
MasterNever Said,
August 27, 2006 @ 22:07
Interesting article. It’s a bit on th techy side, not really discussing business.
Web 2.0 is thriving. Advertising is really big…
Jurriaan Mous Said,
August 28, 2006 @ 8:14
Indeed, as the web 2.0 business thing is more a silicon valley thing and in no way a hype in the Dutch Business life. (there are other priorities here) So I tried to ignore it for this article and tried to focus on where I see the main progress from my view.
But indeed web 2.0 is thriving and getting bigger every minute. It is interesting to predict what next hypes will be and when we get tired of ‘web 2.0′
lara Said,
September 4, 2006 @ 23:33
I think you’ll see what you call web 3.0 glazed over on the way to web 4.0. I think the re-visualization of information is evolving in the context of web 2.0 and the move from web to desktop will the next BIG leap forward.
I’m betting on XUL and one you didn’t mention – Yahoo Widget Engine. It’s been around for a while as Konfabulator and is quite elegant.
One aspect of the move toward the desktop that I think will be important is the move toward “lightweight” applications. I don’t think the browser will disappear, because there needs to be a flagship for displaying internet content. Web turned Desktop developers are not going to want to build CPU hogs that compete with Firefox, Photoshop and Outlook. They’ll be building lightweight widgets, focused on simplicty, function and beauty.
Web X.Y » Web X.Y, What’s next? Said,
November 30, 2006 @ 11:51
[...] A while ago Jurriaan Mous posted an article on the next phases of the web. He makes some interesting points about the integration of the internet with the desktop. I don’t agree with the term “phase” he uses. A better term would be to speak of “movement” I think, because there does not seem to be a certain order in which things happen. They kind of all happen at the same time. [...]
links for 2007-06-18 « tilt! Said,
June 18, 2007 @ 1:24
[...] Web 2.0 is dead, long live Web 3.0! (tags: Web2.0 social.software Web3.0) [...]