A Real Web 3.0 Perspective

There are a lot of definitions of Web 3.0 going around. As can be expected, everyone defines it from their own perspective. It occurred to me that defining it from your own perspective is a pretty darned good way to describe what Web 3.0 is because it will connect information for us based on its knowledge of us. Supposedly it will allow applications to work intelligently to understand the meaning (semantics) of information and then connect us with this information based on its knowledge of us. Web 3.0 will be defined by each of us based on the main benefit it is providing us. I think of it as providing efficiency to the vast amount of information available on the internet in web pages, social networks, forums, etc. Connecting and combining information we need and want and saving us all the time we spend doing it manually.

Amiad Solomon in his keynote “Semantic Web: Making Advertising More Relevant to Consumers” at the Web 3.0 Conference & Expo provided his definition of Web 3.0. He said "I believe the simplest definition of Web 3.0 is the monetization and commercialization of Web 2.0". This is a definition from his perspective, a definition from someone running a semantic marketing firm. Not that I don’t think advertising will quickly adapt to Web 3.0 technologies. I think se-mantic marketing has the potential to offer both the user and the advertiser needed benefits.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt defines Web 3.0 as “a different way of building applications. Applications are pieced together and are relatively small, the data is in a cloud and can run on any device, very fast and very customizable and distributed virally through social networks, email, etc.” These applications will make the user generated content that Web 2.0.created able to be personalized and managed more efficiently. Think of it as a personalized mashup of information coming from multiple places provided by applications that are intelligent enough to sift through it knowing our interests, history, etc. and presented to us in the format we prefer.

I guess we should figure out what Web 3.0 means to us and for us. It would be nice to understand Web 3.0 when it is happening, in real time, instead of not really getting it until Web 4.0 comes along and maybe not even then. Sometimes the light comes on and I think I get it but I know I am far from really getting it.

Lynn Jebbia is a Senior Project Manager at ArteWorks SEO, search engine marketing company. Her focus is SEO Strategy, Keyword Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Web Site Audits, Pay Per Click Management and Client Account Management.

An Explanation of the Semantic Web

Today users drive the search for the information they are looking for on the internet. They may use Google as their search agent and review the first five or ten listings to get the answer, product or service they are looking for. The interactions produced by Web 2.0 type applications like social media networks have made it easy to interact with other people and bring a whole new dimension to our information search. The computers are the tools we use to get this information. We then have to interpret this information. The computers on the web don’t understand the content of the html documents they display, they simply display it.

The semantic web is about getting web computers to understand the semantics (the content) of the information they display. The goal is to make the information available on the web able to be interpreted by computers. This involves structuring the data by creating metadata that describes the meaning of the data. It is done with open standards so that any application can understand it and the data can be shared. The web becomes a database. Now it is more like a file server. It means describing things so that computers can understand the relationships between things. The semantic web will allow intelligent agents to work for you to tell you what you need to know based on their understanding of you derived from everything the agent knows about you: your past queries, your interests, the context of your past interactions, etc. The agent will then be able to act for you to gather information from multiple sources and present it to you. Think of it as the agent doing your research for you and then presenting this information to you in the way you like to see it.

An example of this is the CALO project. Just as the Defense Department created the first network of computers as the precursor of the internet called Arpanet the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is now working on a project to develop a personalized cognitive assistant under its Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL) program. According to the project website “The goal of PAL is to create cognitive software systems which are systems that can reason, learn from experience, be told what to do, explain what they are doing, reflect on their experience, and respond robustly to surprise.” The goal is to develop technology that will have a lot of value for the military so there isn’t a lot of public information about the project. However, it should have far reaching effects on the development of the semantic web.

Today we have tons of information on the internet. Search engines allow us to query this information to find what we are looking for. Most people spend too much time trying to find this information. It seems productive compared to how we did it before the internet but making the web meaningful for computers will allow us to automate this process and increase our productivity. It’s the next generation of the Internet called Web 3.0.

Lynn Jebbia is a Senior Project Manager at ArteWorks SEO, search engine marketing company. Her focus is SEO Strategy, Keyword Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Web Site Audits, Pay Per Click Management and Client Account Management.