Some say web3 is about cryptocurrency and decentralizatioan, others say it is about the metaverse with focus on VR/AR, and some are bringing up the semantic web. What do folks think? What are the major features/trends of Web 3.0?
Don't forget the Web 3 consortium, but that's just for the three Ws.<p>The concept of web 3 was introduced to me in ~'09 by a technologist friend saying the logical progression of web 2.0 is complete interconnectivity of websites. Site A is going to be able to communicate with site B to form meaningful experiences. This sounds a bit like the metaverse or at a basic level mass adoption of APIs in web development. It was a smart take but not what web 3.0 came to mean in the immediate future.<p>For a while, Web 3.0 was widely accepted as the semantic web, a new set of standards and ideas about how data should be structured on the internet. This sort of came to pass—interestingly, search engines pushed this hard, to the point where there's not much left to talk about. I think the semantic web concept fell out of the conversation because it's not very exciting and is/has been in continuous adoption without any disruption or substantial difference to end users.<p>The new Web3 is all about disruption. A meaningful change in what the internet is/how it is used is what marked the gradual shift from Web 1.0 to web 2.0. It would make sense if the change from 2 to 3 was more substantial than semantics...<p>That said, do I like any of the concepts being offered as the future of the internet? Not at all. I'll wait for the next definition of the 3, or at least the second service pack.