Online Media Cultist

There’s lots of strong negative reaction amongst the blogospheric pontificators this morning (including some I have great respect for such as Mathew Ingram and Fred of A VC) to a Jason Calacanis piece entitled Web 3.0, the official definition.

I wrote a piece this morning supporting the definition and in fact saw nothing remotely controversial in it.

Here’s what I just commented on Ingram’s story:

Are people becoming too concerned with the *semantics* web?

I understand that Mr. Calacanis excels at drumming up controversy and blogospheric conversations, but I’m surprised at the reactions to this.

Maybe I’m just more comfortable with throwing loose labels around than others, but I see zero that’s controversial in Jason’s definition, and in fact think it’s right on. Web technology is more or less commoditized today, therefore the best ideas and execution of those ideas will tend to win out over the next few years. That’s my take as well.

Now, maybe the semantic web (or the “whatever web”) will be Web 3.0 *or* Web 4.0 or whatever, but does that really matter?

Sure, Jason’s “official” definition is a bold assertion, and of course the story that he’s preaching will make room for Mahalo’s (Calacanis’ latest project) success, but who cares?

The term “web 2.0″ has been around for several years now, and has over time evolved to represent the current state of the modern Internet. It’s a ubiquitous term that can apply to things like the social networking phenomenon, fancy “drag-and-drop” applications powered by AJAX, the much reviled term “user generated content,” and even an over-arching design aesthetic (super simple and clean) right down to a now hyper-clichéd logo and site name (you’re screaming to your audience that you’re web 2.0 if you drop a vowel from your site name and make one of the consonants a different color!).

So in a very general sense sites/services like MySpace and Digg and GMail and YouTube represent the web 2.0 era, even if we can argue that most of the underlying technology has been around for years. The point is that these are sites that got massive numbers of people to use this technology and form communities around these services

Over time people have started to muse about what a “web 3.0″ world might look like. Jason Calacanis basically nails it today, echoing a consensus that has sprung up from conversations that I’ve had with colleagues over the last several months:

Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform. […]

Web 2.0 services are now the commoditized platform, not the final product. In a world where a social network, wiki, or social bookmarking service can be built for free and in an instant, what’s next?

The thing to know about today’s web software development environment is that everyone is playing with basically the same set of tools. No one really has “better technology” to use and deploy than anyone else anymore, and likely this will never be the case in the future.

What that means is that good ideas that meet market needs, that give people the right solution to the right problem at the right time, OR the right service to the right need at the right time, will be the web 3.0 winners.

I see all of this as great news for the continued evolution of the Internet. The barrier to entry is lower than ever, and great ideas have the opportunity to dominate the marketplace when executed with precision.