Simona Conti

Internet, Media Changes

and Innovation 2010
prof. Anja Bechmann

The Evolution of the Web

Critical analysis on the transformation of the concept of Web
from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0 (or so-called Semantic Web)

1
Table of Contents

FORWARD..........................................................................................................................................................3

1.THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OF WEB......................................................................4

2. MAIN ASPECTS OF WEB 1.0, WEB 2.0 AND WEB3.0.....................................................................7

2.1. Main aspects of Web 1.0 ......................................................................................................................................................7

2.2. Main aspects of Web 2.0 ......................................................................................................................................................9

2.3. Main aspects of Web 3.0 ................................................................................................................................................... 12

3. WIKIPEDIA VS. NETVIBES: DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN TWO EXAMPLES

OF WEB 2.0 AND WEB 3.0 ......................................................................................................................... 14

CONCLUSIONS.............................................................................................................................................. 22

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 25

2
Forward

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse how the concept of Web has changed in
literature from its early apparition in the mid-1990s until today’s concept of Web 3.0.
Over the last ten years the concept of the World Wide Web has changed considerably:
from Web 1.0 (1999-2004) where content was local to the individual network and users
were generally passive consumers, to the more social Web 2.0, (2004-about 2007/8) in
which any participant can be a content creator and content is distributed across the
network. At the heart of this we find the users ability to share data and contents and the
emergence of social networks (such as MySpace, Linkedin, Facebook, etc..), blogs, wikis,
RSS feeds, open APIs and numerous other technological aids created to maximize the
potential for content creation. What has distinguished Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 is the
professionalization and the proliferation of contents. Web 2.0 has been a great tool for
generating content, but now there is too much of it and it is hard to find what we are
really looking for. According to numerous authors, the concept of the Web is moving
towards a new and more evolved form called Semantic Web (or Web 3.0). Web 3.0 is
mainly about filtering the content that is of interest to the user. One of the purposes of
Web 3.0 is to simplify the user’s choice.

First I will try to list the main aspects of all the three Web versions briefly described
above, making references to literature from the last ten years and I will categorize them
to critically discuss this evolutionary process. What has really changed from Web 1.0 to
Web 2.0, and what are the main aspects that should distinguish a Web 2.0 site to a more
Web 3.0 oriented site? What are the similarities existing among the different versions of
the Web? I will secondly treat also aspects related to innovation and change, with
reference to the envisioning essay of the American engineer Vannevar Bush, “As we may
think”.

Finally I will discuss two case studies, Wikipedia for Web 2.0 and NetVibes for Web 3.0 to
reflect on whether it is really fruitful to talk about radical different versions of the web or
if we are living a more fluid and continuous evolutionary process made up of little
changes and enhancements of existing features.

3
1.The transformation of the concept of the Web

From its very first apparition to the mass of users in the late 1990s, the Web has
changed a lot and demonstrated to be very much alive. The first generation of Internet,
that is nowadays called Web 1.0, was primarily a means to browse information. But with
the rise of sites like Facebook and Amazon, the web has become increasingly interactive.
In Web 2.0 the user is the main producer of content: without contributors there would
be no Facebook, and without people who post information on Wikipedia and their clips
on YouTube there would be no interaction on these sites.

This switch of the concept of Web has confused and still confuse people a lot. Some of
them aren’t able to identify what are the main differences between what has been
called by Berners-Lee “Web 2.0” and the previous “Web 1.0”. Meanwhile, many of them
are also becoming more and more familiar with most of the instruments of Web 2.0
concept: blogging, tagging and social networking for instance. According to web
developers, designers, computer engineers and media researchers, these tools have
paved the way to the next step in the development of a further and newer concept of
the Web: the intelligent and omnipresent Web 3.0, or so called Semantic Web.

But is the concept of Web 3.0 really so different from Web 2.0? Are we really living an
innovation, a radical change to the web, or is it more about a fluid and continuous
evolution of the Web in which we can’t recognize really clear stages? If it was like this,
terms and definitions like Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 maybe would be better considered as
buzzwords built mainly for marketing purposes.

As author Anthony Licari affirmed in his article “Does Web 3.0 exists? You tell me”
(2010):
“Changing the first number of a version implies that we are dealing with something
completely different. Night and day. Yet here we are in 2010 and I can still do a Google
search, have a Web 1.0 site pull up and find it useful. That’s all that matters I thought.
That a site is able to properly meet its goals.”

4
And he continues:
“With that we have HTML5, Ruby on Rails, Cloud Computing, the guts of the web... the
specifics and the trends are what change and it is those things that version numbers and
language really matters. The web is just the web and as much as it evolves and methods
are created to make it faster and better and more useful it is still and always will be the
“web” […]. I think the fact that needing to read a multiple page definition of what “Web
2.0″ and “Web 3.0″ is, pretty much says it all..”

In 1945, the inspired and genial american engineer Vannevar Bush, wrote his most
famous article, “As we may think”, in which he described and envisioned an
hypothetical innovative device that could have been introduced in all homes: “memex”.
As Bush described it, Memex should have been an adjustable microfilm-viewer which is
somewhat analogous to the structure of the World Wide Web. He described it as “a
device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and
which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It
is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. ” (Bush, 1945: 5). Such a
technological device would have been able, among the other things, to record and
store a huge amount of data (e.g. “The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to
the volume of a matchbox” Bush, 1945:5), interconnect them in a contextual and
situation-based way and share them with different users: all aspects belonging also to
the more recent concepts of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Bush treated the great economical
possibilities (like the reduction of costs rising from reproduction of data) as well as social
possibilities of such an innovation. He also minutely described one of the possible uses
of memex:

“The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the
bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently
superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of
possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an
encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a
history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes,
building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either
linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it

5
 becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do
with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on
elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his
own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.
And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer
ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in
the fact that the outranged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has
a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of
the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side
excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer
in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his
own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.” (Bush, 1945: 11)

In this envisioned scenario, Bush talked about, among other things, aspects of social
sharing of data, user production and semantic association (rather than indexing): some
of the main features that characterizes the World Wide Web (today and that maybe
could more specifically describe Web 2.0 and Wikipedia). Memex never got built, not
even a prototype, and remained just an idea as at the time Bush was writing, memex
appeared more as a bizarre concept than a real innovation. But the real key point of the
article was not to build a machine, instead it was to determine a new way of looking at
information as sets of interlinked concepts. “This is the essential feature of the memex.
The process of tying two items together is the important thing” affirmed Bush (1945: 5).
With his essay, Bush has influenced the development of subsequential hypertext and
intellect augmenting computer systems. The basic concepts of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and
even some of Web 3.0 aspects of structure and functioning are not so recent and
instead reside in older works and conceptualizations.

So, are we dealing with aspects of a real innovation while discussing the changes
existing in the so called Web 1.0, Web 2.0 ad Web 3.0? Or is it more about a fluid and not
so segmented course that characterize World Wide Web evolution?

6
Before deepening the discussion about whether the use of different expressions to
define the changes of the Web is fruitful or not, I will analyze what are the different
aspects and features that define Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 according to existing literature.

I will finally treat whether and why those different changing aspects described by many
authors can be considered slight and overlapping, eventually leading some authors to
talk about Web 1.5 and Web 2.5, and I will do so also analyzing two case studies
considered as Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 examples: Wikipedia and NetVibes.

2. Main aspects of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web3.0

In the following sections I reported some of the features of the various versions of the
Web as they have been identified by different authors.

2.1. Main aspects of Web 1.0

Web 1.0 as been described the ‘publish and browse Web’:

“Think of the first iteration of the Web as a digital newspaper. You could open its pages
and observe its information, but you couldn’t modify or interact with it. And rarely could
you communicate meaningfully with its authors, apart from sending an e-mail to the
editor.” (Tapscott, 2006:37)

And according to Harris:

“Web 1.0 is the older mode of World Wide Web. Any website which was designed or
styled before the Web 2.0 phenomenon are all considered as part of Web 1.0. In other
words, the Web 1.0 refers to the websites before the boom of internet usage through
community websites” (Harris, 2008: 53)

The main aspects of Web 1.0 can be divided into categories defining structure,
technological and social features and traffic measurement.

7
From a structural/technological point of view Web 1.0 sites are characterized by:
 Static web pages (in Web 2.0 web pages are dynamic and contents is generated by
users) (Harris, 2008: 110)
 Use of framesets and tags introduced during the so-called first browser era (this
also features online guestbooks and GIF buttons). (Harris, 2008: 110)
 distinctive ‘bow-tie’ structure, with three distinct pieces of a massive connected
component. (Cormode & Krishnamurthy 2008: 6-17)
 Individual sites typically adopted an approximately hierarchical structure, with a front
page leading to various subpages, augmented by cross-links and search functions.
(Cormode & Krishnamurthy 2008: 6-17)
 Lack of support for mobile devices (Wei, 2006:6)
 Lack of support for two-way communications: the web 1.0 communication
based on HTTP is a client-pull model that can be initiated by the client only.
Server can not initiate communications with clients. (Wei, 2006:6)

From a sociological/functional perspective:

 A traditional Web 1.0 website delivers information to users in an almost one way
manner, like “a vast book set on electronic platform and deliver content as they appear
on the site.” (Harris, 2008: 110-111)
 In Web 1.0 most sites have links to external sites and users may easily follow links to
other sites (Harris, 2008)
 Web1.0 sites that do not allow user participation in a visible manner can only
compete on the basis of content. User generated content even in the form of comments
have been rare until recently on Web 1.0 sites (Harris, 2008)
 Web 1.0 is “designed for sharing and browsing hyper-linked documents.” (Wei,
2006:6)
 “click, wait and page refresh” interaction model: this user interaction model is
designed for document browsing, not for interactive applications (Wei, 2006:6)

Relating to traffic measurement point of view:

 In Web1.0 traffic measurement was based on precise, comparable metrics. The click
count and page view defined quantities which could be measured through site traffic
logs, and compared. (Cormode & Krishnamurthy 2008: 6-17)

8
2.2. Main aspects of Web 2.0

“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the
internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new
platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects
to get better the more people use them. (This is what I've elsewhere called "harnessing
collective intelligence.")“ (O'Reilly, 2006)

According to Tapscott, 2006 was the year when the programmable Web or Web 2.0
eclipsed the static Web, or Web 1.0, every time: flickr beat webshots, Wikipedia beat
Britannica, bloggers beat CNN, Epinions beat Consumer-Reports, Upcoming beat evite,
GoogleMaps beat MapQuest, MySpace beat Friendster and craiglist beat Monster.
(Tapscott, 2006). As it has been described by numerous authors, the concept of Web 2.0
has to be considered as both a platform on which innovative technologies have been
built and a space where users are treated as first class objects.

According to Harris:
“There is no single definition for Web 2.0. There are many separate views on the term.
But generally, Web 2.0 refers to the world wide web of today. It refers to the enhanced
functionality creativity and sharing of information. Web 2.0 facilitated the development
of video and photo sharing, social networks, blogs and so on.” (Harris, 2008: 31-32)

Starting from the assumption of a multi-faceted vision of the same concept, I listed
some of the many aspects of Web 2.0 concept identified by different authors.

From a structural/technological point of view:

 The trend is towards an increasingly customized ‘front page’ so that no two users have
the same experience (Cormode, 2008: 8-10)
 Web 2.0 sites promote intra-site activities, often requiring users to log in and build
links to others on the site (Cormode, 2008: 8-10)
 Web 2.0 concepts are geared towards open exchange of data and towards the
adoption of open standards as well. (Harris, 2008: 31-32)

9
  Simplicity of web pages, is to say removing not important components without
sacrificing the effectiveness of the site and thinking of simpler alternative designs that
could achieve the same results. (Harris, 2008: 40-41)
 Web 2.0 websites should always contain fresh and useful or entertaining content.
Modern web users want a site that can offer new and engaging content every time they
visit it (Harris, 2008: 100)
 Technical features like public API 1 to allow third-party enhancements and “mash-ups” 2 ,
and embedding of various rich content types (e.g. Flash videos), and communication
with other users through internal email or IM systems. (Cormode, 2008:6).
 Mobile 2.0 or Mobile Web 2.0 is slowly becoming the hottest buzzword. Mobile Web
2.0 is the practice of integrating web applications with that of mobile devices such as
smart phones (Harris, 2008: 104)

From a sociological/functional point of view:

 Incorporation of a strong social component, involving user profiles and friend links.
(Cormode, 2008:2).
 Bi-directional traffic among users (e.g. using post replies) due in part to implicit bi-
directionality of links (Cormode, 2008: 8-10)
 Web sites which encourage user-generated content in the form of text, video, and
photo postings along with comments, tags, and ratings. Any participant can be a
content creator (a prosumer) in Web 2.0 (Cormode, 2008: 4) .
 Is a platform of collaboration, not just a new way of publishing information.
(Leadbeater, 2009:30).
 In Web 2.0 some sites enforce a very user-centric view of the site, meaning that each
account can only see detailed information about explicit ‘friends’ (e.g. Facebook), in
comparison to Web 1.0 which is typically stateless. (Cormode, 2008: 8-10)
 In Web 2.0, with a lot of user generated content, it is not uncommon to have small
incremental additions to the site. The changes do not have to be done by the content
‘owner’—friends can write comments (e.g., on their Facebook ‘wall’) which would
constitute a change. (Cormode, 2008: 8-10)

1
An API is an application programming interface with which external applications can communicate with.
2
A popular innovation in Web 2.0 is “mash-ups”. A mash-up is defined as a web site that combines content data from
more than one source to create a new user experience. Examples of consumer mash-ups include the many Google
Maps applications” (Harris, 2008: 51)

10
  The long tail effect of Web 2.0. : Democratic nature exemplified by creations of large
number of niche groups (collections of friends) who can exchange content of any kind
(text, audio, video) and tag, comment, and link to both intra-group and extra-group
“pages”.
 Webmasters must ensure that the applications in their site can be adopted even by
those without programming knowledge. (Harris, 2008: 100)
 Folksonomies or social tagging. It is where any content on the internet can be tagged
with descriptors of that content. It uses freely chosen keywords instead of controlled
keywords (Harris, 2008: 66).

Relating to traffic measurement point of view:

 A key difference in Web 2.0 is the trend towards ‘portalization’: trying to build every
possible feature into the site, where once the user signs in, they never need to leave
(Cormode, 2008: 8-10)
 The shift in technologies that has accompanied the rise of Web 2.0, in particular
asynchronous transfers, has weakened the precision and comparability traffic
measurement: a user can spend a significant amount of time interacting with a single
page without ever triggering an explicit “page load” event (a ‘click’ in Web1 world) :
(Cormode, 2008:17)

11
 Figure 1. An example of mash up of data. Dopplr, a web 2.0 tool for sharing plans of travels with other
users, automatically link photos of flickr with a correspondent trip on a map

2.3. Main aspects of Web 3.0

“Web 3.0, a phrase coined by John Markoff of the New York Times in 2006, refers to a
supposed third generation of Internet-based services that collectively comprise what
might be called 'the Intelligent Web' such as those using semantic Web, microformats,
natural language search, data mining, machine learning, recommendation agents, and
artificial intelligence technologies.” (Reynard, 2010)

According to its many definitions, Web 3.0 will be about semantic web (or the meaning
of data), personalization (e.g. iGoogle), intelligent search, behavioural advertising, focus
on lifestream, entertainment anywhere and anytime from smartphones and alternative
computer devices (like game consoles, watches, kisosks, tabletops) that bring mobile
web to the forefront.

The following are some of the main features of Web 3.0 recently identified by different
authors.

From a structural/technological point of view:

 The central role of web services, is to say a softwares system designed to support
computer-to-computer interaction over the Internet. Web services are not new and
usually take the form of an Application Programming Interface (API).

12
  Semantic Web and semantic markup. Through the use of some sort of semantic
markup, or data interchange formats, data could be put in a form not only
accessible to humans via natural language, but able to be understood and
interpreted by software applications as well (Reynard, 2010)

 Transforming the Web in a database: this would make easier to access contents
by several applications that don’t belong to browsers

 Towards AI: the term Web 3.0 has been used to describe an evolutionary course of
the Web that would lead it to an Artificial Intelligence, able to interact with the Web
in an almost human way.

 Todd Lucier blogged last year that Web 3.0 is "the location-aware and moment-
relevant Internet” . Content relevance in Web 3.0 is heightened by location and
time. (Reynard, 2010)

From a sociological/functional point of view:

 Simpler online searching. Semantic search uses the science of meaning in
language—instead of just searching keywords, it checks the context of the words to
return more relevant results. This is the reason why web 3.0 is viewed as a very
helpful tool in simplifying online searches”.(Harris, 2008: 46-47)

 Everything, everywhere and always. We must imagine future internet as a service:

mobile, ubiquity and pervasive. Web 3.0 is not totally different from the web we
know now, it is in many respects a continuation of many techniques.

 an Internet of Services, where services are ubiquitous and majored to meet our
individual needs;

 an Internet of Things where in principle every physical object becomes an online

addressable resource; as more and more appliances are connected to the internet
(think on telephones, washing machines and cars) the web is more present, but it
will become less visible.

 a Mobile Internet where 24/7 seamless connectivity over multiple devices is the
norm; and the need for semantics in order to meet the challenges presented by the
dramatic increase in the scale of content and users.

13
3. Wikipedia vs. NetVibes: differences and similarities between two
examples of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

During Technet Summit in November 2006, Reed Hastings, funder and CEO of Netflix,
summarized in a simple expression the different phases of the Web:

« Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50k average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average 1 megabit of
bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the
full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0 »

With such a definition, Web evolution is defined mainly as a technical enhancement

that contributes to influence the spread of new and bigger possibilities. A faster
bandwidth that enables users to do a lot of new and more interesting things (not only
looking for information, as it happened during the first phase of the Web).

The social media strategist at Organic inc., Marta Strickland summed up the main
differences between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 in the following table (Strickeland,
2009):

I will try critically analyze both NetVibes (described as an example of Web 3.0) and
Wikipedia (described as an example of Web 2.0) and meanwhile I will try to understand
how many differences and similarities exist between these two examples of different
version of the concept of World Wide Web. Are we really dealing with a great innovation
of the Web or is it more about a fluid and continuous evolution/improvement of it?

14
Wikipedia

Quoting the “about” section of Wikipedia:

“Wikipedia (pronounced /ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdi.ə/ WIK-i-PEE-dee-ə) is a multilingual, web-based,
free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly-editable model. The name
"Wikipedia" is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative
websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's
articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.”

The politics of impartiality together with the work done by an international team of
volunteers, has contributed to make Wikipedia not only a simple clone of existing
encyclopaedias, but a work that has completely transformed the process of recording of
human history in a revolutionary and collaborative activity. (Lih, 2010)

15
In Wikipedia any user can contribute to its enrichment and refinement using the open
"wiki" editing model. Any content can be modified at anytime by anyone. Most
importantly, when changes to an article are made, they become available immediately
before undergoing any review, no matter if they contain an error, are somehow
misguided, or even patently nonsense. The basic principle is that collective intelligence
represented by the mass of users will lead Wikipedia to improve day by day.

16
Wikipedia is a prototypical example of what Web 2.0 is, and so it matches most of the
aspects of Web 2.0 treated in the previous chapter:
 it promotes intra-site activities, with numerous sections (news, “did you know”, “on
this day”) and incentives to remain in the site
 is based on open exchange of data and the adoption of open standards
 has a real simple design that doesn’t scarify the effectiveness of the site
 contains fresh and useful contents, as user contribute continually to insert new
information also linked to last minute world events
 offers a public API (Wikipedia API 1.0) to embed Wikipedia content dynamically on a
Web site.
 Incorporates a strong social component, involving user to participate actively to the
refinement of the contents also through public discussions in dedicated forums
 Encourage user-generated content, which is the core of Wikipedia
 It is a platform of collaboration, and not just a new way of publishing information.
 Has a long tail effect as Wikipedia is open to any kind of contribution, both mainstream
or niche (in the limits of veracity, no vulgarity, politically correctness)
 Small incremental additions to the site, due to continuous adding of contents by
users
 Contents can be modified even by those without programming knowledge just by
click on the “edit” option of every entry of Wikipedia
 Mobile 2.0: On mobile devices access to Wikipedia from mobile phones was possible as
early as 2004, through the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), through the Wapedia
service. In June 2007, Wikipedia launched en.mobile.wikipedia.org, an official website
for wireless devices.
 Trend towards ‘portalization’: trying to build every possible feature into the site,
where once the user signs in, they never need to leave.

Anyway in Wikipedia we can find some of the aspects that characterize also the concept
of Web 3.0:

 Simpler searching activity and transfmation of Wikipedia in a full size database:

Even if there are no semantic mark-ups, the simple use of hyper-text links between
entries turn Wikipedia in a full size database of no hierarchical information in which
everything could be easily found using indirect paths.

17
NetVibes
As reported in the “about us” section of NetVibes.com: “Founded in 2005, Netvibes
pioneered the first personalized dashboard publishing platform for the Web. For
consumers, Netvibes.com is the most awarded startpage where millions of people
around the world personalize and publish all aspects of their daily digital lives.”

When accessing for the first time NetVibes.com we can use the “dashboard” as an
anonymous user to browse information on the Web.

If we decide to create a personal account, the first page that we will see will be
automatically personalized with information coming from the IP address of the device
through which we are connecting. For example, in my case I automatically obtained
information about Denmark weather forecasts, my flickr photos and my gmail box
updates. All of these data have been aggregated also from information stored in my
browser.

18
Moreover, the first page and any dashboard that will be created by the user can be
composed as he want (just like in iGoogle), by adding, moving and removing widgets 3
in the dashboard. Doing so, NetVibes helps and allows the user to collect always fresh
and updated information linked with his interests.

Then I created a new dashboard in which I looked for contents related to “Magritte”, my
favourite artist.

3
In computer programming, a widget (or control) is an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that
displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box.

19
What I obtained was an aggregation of data coming from all over the web and having
some relation with Magritte: Google results, video from various channels, Flickr photos,
Twitter conversations, Wikis and news. Everything is continually updated into the
different widget boxes that compose the dashboard. Contents are filtered and
personalised.

NetVibes owns some of the main aspects of Web 3.0 presented in the last chapter:
 The central role of web services, and the great amount of Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs) that constitutes every widget present in the personal page and
dashboards created in NetVibes

20
  “the location-aware and moment-relevant Internet” as widgets and information are
transmitted according to geographical location and connecting personal data coming
from different social networks and web services in which the user results registered
 Personalisation: data are gathered to create a more personal approach to the website
 Simpler online searching: as all the type of information present in the Web (video,
photos, text, Twitter conversations etc…) are aggregated to answer any kind of user
query
 a Mobile Internet and Internet of things where 24/7 seamless connectivity over
multiple devices is the norm: as information can be aggregated from, for example ,
Twitter conversations published from smart phones or other portable devices

However, NetVibes continues to be strongly characterized by Web 2.0 aspects such as:
 The trend towards an increasingly customized ‘front page’
 The promotion of intra-site activities that led to ‘portalization’
 Open exchange of data and towards the adoption of open standards as well:
enabling users to create and freely use widgets
 Simplicity of web pages, even though everything is extremely customizable
 Has fresh and useful or entertaining content, as everything should match with the
interests of the users being always updated
 Presence public API to allow third-party enhancements and “mash-ups” of data with
of different type
 Mobile 2.0 as contents are accessible from any mobile devices
 Very user-centric view of the site
 Incorporation of a strong social component as everything is the result of a social
production of contents
 Folksonomies or social tagging: as the majority of the aggregated data is linked
thanks to shared social tags that create new meanings and new reading paths to
information.
 Use of asynchronous transfers technologies

What emerges from this analysis is that it is difficult to clearly define whether a site
belongs to Web 2.0 or Web 3.0. The two concepts sometimes mingle together and the
main aspects of Web 2.0 still characterize what are considered Web 3.0 sites. More than
being a real innovation, Web 3.0 seems an enhancement of Web 2.0.

21
Conclusions

During the passage from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 lot of confusion existed on whether and
when calling a site Web 2.0 or Web 1.0. This was in part because, according to what
Harris says, it was hard to identify Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 sites “since a lot of the
technological components that compose Web 2.0 applications have been in existence
ever since the earlier days. “(Harris, 2008: 106). Even two schools of opinions among
experts were formed to discuss the existence of Web 2.0:
 The school is critical of Web 2.0, represented by Tim Berners-Lee and Russell Raw,
who thought that there was nothing fundamentally different between “Web 1.0”
and the so-called “Web 2.0”, that Web 2.0 has nothing new and is based on the
same technology as of Web 1.0 and that Web 2.0 was just a piece of jargon.
 The second group of experts are Web 2.0 champions, represented by Tim
O’Reilly, Paul Graham and Dion Hinch Cliffe. This group argued that: Web 2.0
existed and was characterized by “Architecture of Participation”, “the Network
Effect (social network)”, and “Harnessing the collective intelligence” are
fundamentally new and different from web 1.0; and that Web 2.0 is more about a
paradigm shift in how people use the web, less about new technology.

Some authors like Cormode & Krishnamurthy (2008) even introduced the term Web 1.5
to characterize sites that were hard to categorize strictly as Web 1.0 or Web 2.0, as they
fall in both categories. For example, according to them, in Amazon “the principal
content (is to say product descriptions) is curated rather than user-created, but much of
the value is added by reviews and ratings submitted by users”. (Cormode &
Krishnamurthy, 2008: 9)

We can find the same type of confusion for the definition of Web 2.0 and its further
developments. Hildreth coined the expression Web 2.5 to identify subtle differences
existing between Web 2.0 and what he considered more evolved websites. Hildreth
affirmed that:
“The conceptual idea is that Web 2.5 builds upon what Web 2.0 is all about and adds
new concepts to the way users experience the Web. These concepts include: OS
independence, is to say the ability for a program or Web application to run on any

22
 operating system the user may, open source and more efficient, secure development as
well as better aesthetics, robustness, and better quality.” (Hildreth, 2008:8)

Hildreth compared some examples of Web 2.0 and Web 2.5 services in a table:

In his analysis Hildreth presented something that seemed more like a process of slight
and constant change and refinement of the Web rather than a real innovation of it. As
Hildreth argues:
“Web 2.5 is an incremental version number to designate what was after 2.0 and what is
before 3.0. This will continue indefinitely as the Web continues to progress and evolve
into something that only future generations of users will see.” (Hildreth, 2008:9)

From its very first days World Wide Web represented a real innovation for the world. The
same innovative charge was present in the enlighten thoughts that Vannevar Bush
fixed in 1945 in his most famous writing, describing something that was really similar to
present World Wide Web. Dealing with the different numerical versions of the Web
concept, should probably lead to discuss aspects slightly different to real innovations.
According to Slappendel “the perception of newness also serves to differentiate
innovation from change. […] While all innovations imply change, not all change
involves innovation”. (Slappendel, 1996: 107). We have to consider the Web as living an
heterogeneous and fluid process of innovation in which no distinct phase is
recognisable but technical, economic, marketing etc.. aspects mingle together and
influence the whole evolution (Latour, 1987). Even if recognizing different aspects and
changes occurring in such an evolutionary process could be undoubtedly useful, the
continuous search of terms and definitions describing different stages of this evolution
could become really confusing. As I tried to demonstrate in my case studies analysis, it
can really be hard to clearly categorize sites as only belonging to Web 2.0 or Web 3.0.

23
Maybe, further research on Web evolution shouldn’t stress too much the existence of
clear and defined stages of innovation. Doing so, is to say treating the Web innovation
as a negotiated and ongoing process, new theories would probably gain more, being
more precise and less confusing.

24
Bibliographic references

 Abbate Janet (1999) Inventing the Internet. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
 Aime Marco, Cossetta Anna (2010). Il dono al tempo di internet, Editore Einaudi (text in
italian)
 Anderson, Chris (2008). Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business, WIRED Magazine
 Berners-Lee, Tim; James Hendler and Ora Lassila, (2008). The Semantic Web, Scientific
American Magazine
 Bruns, Axel (2007). Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content
Creation. Presented at Creativity & cognition conference, Washington D.C., USA, 13-15
June 2007
 Cormode & Krishnamurthy (2008). Key Differences between Web1.0 and Web 2.0
 Harris Daniel, (2008). Web 2.0 evolution into the intelligent Web 3.0 : 100 most asked
questions on transformation, ubiquitous connectivity, network computing, open
technologies, open identity, distributed databases and intelligent applications, Emereo Pty
Ltd, Australia
 Hildreth, Derek. (2008), A look at Web 2.0 and beyond
 Jensen Lina Jakob (2007) The internet omnopticon, i Bang, H., Esmark, A. (red.) New
Publics with/out Democracy , Samfundslitteratur Press/ NORDICOM, Frederiksberg, s.
351-380
 Latour Bruno (1987), Machines, in Science in action, Harvard University Press
 Licari, Anthony (2010). Does Web 3.0 exists? You tell me.
 Lih Andrew (2010). La rivoluzione di Wikipedia , Editore Codice (text in italian)
 O’Reilly, Tim, (2005). What is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next
Generation of Software, September 2005
 O’Reilly, Tim, (2006). Web 2.0 compact definition: Trying again
 Reynard Ruth (2010), Web 3.0 and Its Relevance for Instruction
 Shannon, Victoria (2006). A 'more revolutionary' Web. International Herald Tribune.
Retrieved May 24, 2006
 Slappendel Carol (1996), Perspectives on Innovation in Organizations, in: Organizations
Studies vol 17 no. 107-129
 Strickland Marta, (2007) The evolution of Web 3.0 , on Slidshare.com
 Tapscott, Don & Williams, Anthony D. (2006). The prosumers: Hack this product please! In:
Wikonomics, Atlantic Books,124-150.
 Vannevar Bush (1945) ”As we may think”, In Atlantic Magazine

25