A couple of years ago, there was a lot of buzz about this “new” thing called Web 2.0.
Well, actually, the web doesn’t really have version numbers.
Web 1.0 was read-only.
Web 2.0 was “create, edit, discuss.” And really, no-one really calls it Web 2.0 in 2009. It’s now called something else. Not social media, that’s a different thing.
But if we’d go back to the version numbering… Well, what’s 3.0 then and when’s it coming?
It’s already here. It consists of unified content systems. What they are, you ask? Well, the Web is tied together. A lot of sites are linked to other sites.
For example, when we take a look at Youtube, you can log in with your Google account. But you also can log in to virtually any site in the world wide web which supports OpenID with a Google account.
You can log into anywhere.
Let’s take another example: My site and it’s integration with Twitter. You can log in using your twitter credentials. Then, you can add content (virtually any kind). After that, you can publish it to twitter with just two clicks. And if that’s not enough, people can comment on it with their Twitter account. (Or, all of this could be done also with OpenID on my site.)
And another one: OpenID. Tons of sites support it these days and it’s a really cool thing, actually. There’s no central registration server. But it works. It ties the web together. But OpenID also has another advantage: if one OpenID provider stops working, the network doesn’t collapse. It stays working.
Even competing services, like Twitter and Facebook offer integration with each other.
What this all means, is that we are turning the Web into a single service.
Whether that’s a good or bad thing you will have to decide yourself.
