This weekend’s Web 2.0 Summit (formerly Web 2.0 Conference) in San Francisco is heavy on the startups and unknowns.

You can follow the Web 2.0 summit news here.

Some of you may be asking “What Is Web 2.0?”

“Web 2.0 is whatever you think it is,” might be a good answer. It was largely based on what you, the user, wanted to contribute or make important. Power to the people with high-speed connections.

This caused You Tube, Flickr, Myspace et. al. to explode when developers realized they should maybe design applications customers wanted. The customers wanted control.

Which begs the obvious question: What is Web 3.0?

Web 3.0 might be considered the response from web managers who looked at Web 2.0 and asked “What are we going to do with all this data?”

A huge mass of disorganized content is less than useful. It is also a pretty good description of what the internet has been for most of its existence.

And people with garbage content, but good at SEO, have managed to decrease the value of search engines overall.

So how do we make this database by default into less of a mess? And how do you prevent users from gaming the system? Tag it like a subway and wait for the AI to fix it runs the theory so far.

There are other predictions for the 3.0. Some argue that bandwidth upgrades will turn the web into a 3D environment.

Or that the delivery and reception systems for data will change. Mobile devices have already redefined the web in part.

The underlying theme is that the internet has gone from new to passé in half a generation. Everyone is looking for the Next Big Thing.

Random Bytes

Graphing The Intertubes

Online News Association conference in Toronto this weekend

Photos: Local Microbrews

Alaska Territorial Guard

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