Part of the next evolution of the web – Web 3.0 to some – is claimed to be the Semantic Web, which enables websites to provide information about what information and functionality they have, and to communicate with other websites. It is a way to make information “understandable” by computers, so that they can perform tasks that humans would normally do.

Understandable data is great, and having a computer (your own or an online service) do your tedious tasks for you is brilliant, since it frees up your time to focus on other things. And time is one of the most valuable commodities we have, isn’t it?

But what about the troves of information that you have to wade through to sometimes find things on the web or on a website? Even though there is (or will be) information about the information on Web 3.0 websites, it will certainly take a long time before a significant part of the web is semantic. And even on semantic websites, how will it make your life easier?

At the end of the day, clever systems readable by computers don’t necessarily make them better for humans.

Socialize the web

Social Media is a term used frequently with buzzwords like Web 2.0. Assuming that Social Media 2.0 is part of the Web 3.0 evolution, the Semantic Web should ping your friends and their social application whenever you do anything online.

Great socialization – or is it?

I admit that I have reconnected with old friends and made plenty of new connections through social media, but just because the communication and information gets better and ’smarter’, will it make social media better for us? Sure, we’ll be constantly connected, perhaps using the same applications across devices. That’s really smart, but nothing revolutionary as far as the web goes. I can do that already, with some tweaking (or enough money).

Website Conversations

What the next generation of Social Media (the 2.0 one, or Web 3.0) really could do, is improve the way we interact with each website, application or interface. Make it an intelligent interface, who simply learns from your actions, asks you what you need, lets you tell it the details and finds it or solves it for you.

If Amazon will start talking to me when I visit, and give me the alternatives as I speak, I am likely to spend even more than I do already in their web shop (I buy several books a month).

If I can tell Google that I am looking for the absolute cheapest price on a DLNA enabled Digital Media Adapter that will work with my Linux network at home – and Google asks “in stock only?” or “available for shipping to Copenhagen?”, then we’re starting to have a conversation. With the Semantic Web, Google may find it for me, but the big deal for me is whether I could call Google via the mobile web and find and order the product with normal human-like conversation.

I do a lot of research for work, and read countless sources of information each week. The Semantic Web should help a few percent in finding information, but then the challenge to marketers becomes “who provides more/better semantics?”. If the next evolution of the web is simply about better information about information, will the competition be about providing the best information about information. Phew!

If, instead, interaction with conversational, learning websites that actually perform the task you ask for, that would be a leap up in Internet evolution!