What do Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 mean? Which one is better?
In the blockchain world, you must have heard about “Web 2.0” and “Web 3.0” frequently. But what do Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 mean? Which one is better?>
For us to make any sense of what we mean by “Web 3.0”, we need to rewind to Web 1.0 and start there.
Web 1.0, in short, was the first “phase” of the web.
During this phase, web pages were static where the content was served from the server’s file system. Moreover, there was no interactivity on these pages. You couldn’t “react” to posts with comments or likes. Instead, you just passively consumed information. The web during this era looks very rudimentary. For example, developers used frames and tables used to position and align the elements on a page (because CSS did not exist!)
Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web)
Refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and devices) for end-users. The term was coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999 and later popularized by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference in late 2004.
Although the term mimics the numbering of software versions, it does not denote a formal change like the World Wide Web, but merely describes a general change that occurred during this period as interactive websites proliferated and came to overshadow the older, more static websites of the original Web.
A Web 2.0 website allows users to interact and collaborate through social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. This contrasts with the first generation of Web 1.0-era websites where people were limited to passively viewing the content. What are the examples of Web 2.0 applications? Examples of Web 2.0 features include social networking sites or social media sites (e.g., Facebook), blogs, wikis, folksonomies ("tagging" keywords on websites and links), video sharing sites (e.g., YouTube), image sharing sites (e.g., Flickr), hosted services, Web applications ("apps"), collaborative consumption platforms, and mashup applications.
What is Web 2.0 technology? When it comes to defining web 2.0. the term means such internet applications which allow sharing and collaboration opportunities to people and help them to express themselves online.
“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as a platform, and any attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”– Tim O’Reilly. It’s a simply improved version of the first worldwide web, characterized specifically by the change from static to dynamic or user-generated content and also the growth of social media.
The concept behind Web 2.0 refers to rich web applications, web-oriented architecture, and social web. It refers to changes in the way web pages are designed and used by the users, without any change in any technical specifications.
Five major features of Web 2.0
Free sorting of information permits users to retrieve and classify the information collectively. Dynamic content that is responsive to user input. Information flows between the site owner and site users utilizing evaluation & online commenting. Developed APIs to allow self-usage, such as by a software application. Web access leads to concern different, from the traditional Internet user base to a wider variety of users.
Usage of Web 2.0
The social Web contains several online tools and platforms where people share their perspectives, opinions, thoughts, and experiences. Web 2.0 applications tend to interact much more with the end-user. As such, the end-user is not only a user of the application but also a participant by these 8 tools mentioned below:
- Podcasting
- Blogging
- Tagging
- Curating with RSS
- Social bookmarking
- Social networking
- Social media
- Web content voting
Web 3.0
It refers to the evolution of web utilization and interaction which includes altering the Web into a database. It enables the up-gradation of the back-end of the web, after a long time of focus on the front-end (Web 2.0 has mainly been about AJAX, tagging, and another front-end user-experience innovation). Web 3.0 is a term that is used to describe many evolutions of web usage and interaction among several paths. In this, data isn’t owned but instead shared, where services show different views for the same web / the same data. The Semantic Web (3.0) promises to establish “the world’s information” in a more reasonable way than Google can ever attain with their existing engine schema. This is particularly true from the perspective of machine conception as opposed to human understanding. The Semantic Web necessitates the use of a declarative ontological language like OWL to produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about information and make new conclusions, not simply match keywords.
Below are 5 main features that can help us define Web 3.0 Semantic Web The succeeding evolution of the Web involves the Semantic Web. The semantic web improves web technologies in demand to create, share and connect content through search and analysis based on the capability to comprehend the meaning of words, rather than on keywords or numbers. Artificial Intelligence Combining this capability with natural language processing, in Web 3.0, computers can distinguish information like humans to provide faster and more relevant results. They become more intelligent to fulfill the requirements of users. 3D Graphics The three-dimensional design is being used widely in websites and services in Web 3.0. Museum guides, computer games, e-commerce, geospatial contexts, etc. are all examples that use 3D graphics. Connectivity With Web 3.0, information is more connected thanks to semantic metadata. As a result, the user experience evolves to another level of connectivity that leverages all the available information. Ubiquity Content is accessible by multiple applications, every device is connected to the web, the services can be used everywhere.
The overarching goal of Web 3.0 is to make the internet a lot more intelligent, autonomous, and open. How? With the use of techs like Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, 3D Graphics, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality. With AI, we can better understand and interpret the content on the web.
With blockchains, we can use it to build applications on decentralized protocols where we remove trusted intermediaries and gain public verifiability. This way we're not stuck in this paradigm where everything on the internet is “walled gardens.” We can use cryptocurrency to completely transform the business model of applications that exist on the internet, instead of the ad-based model that we have today. As Chris Dixon says, we took “a wrong turn” in the current social web by allowing for walled gardens and ad-based business models. The next version of the web will be built on open protocols and will have a built-in business model via crypto. If something feels off about the current version of the web, it’s not just you. Beyond AI, blockchains, and crypto, Web 3.0 will use 3D graphics and technologies like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to make our experience of the web a lot more immersive: very much like the physical world, rather than the existing 2D-internet-world. Overall, an interesting explanation of these phases is one given by Tim Berner-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web:
- Web 1.0 is the “readable” phase of the web. We see limited interaction between users.
- Web 2.0 is the “writable” phase of the web, one where users can interact with the site, and with each other.
- Web 3.0 is the “executable” phase of the web, and here, computers can interpret information like humans, to then generate personalized content for users. To gain more clarity you can check the following the sites gurus Block games Nestcoin Zuriteam