EmTech Spl: Web 3.0 promises a 'personal touch'

NEW DELHI, INDIA: While Web 2.0 is all about social networking, Web 3.0 is going to be about more user-specific experience.

“Web 2.0 was all about social networking, getting people together on the Net. Web 3.0 on the other hand is going to bring the service providers, application providers as well as vendors together on one platform,” says Mehul Shah, Group Chief and CIO-Telemedia, Technology Services, Bharti Airtel. He was speaking at a panel discussion on 'Web 2.0/Web 3.0 Mash up’ at EmTech 2009 here today.

Web 3.0 is an evolving trend which basically will morph into web users looking not just for web pages that contain the information that they are looking for but also for Web services that provide constant updates on items that appeal to their individual interests and needs.

Experts believe that a number of next generation web applications have already started appearing.

Tracing the evolution of Web, CEO and founder of Iridium Interactive, Sriram Bharatam said, “In 2003, during Durga Puja, we carried a campaign for our client, where we posted the Durga Puja pandal pictures on the Net. Surprisingly, we got 5 million viewers. The second year, we asked the pandal organizers to put the pictures on the Net. The third year, viewers were themselves clicking pictures and putting on the Net.”

The evolution of Web 3.0 began when the users started taking information from one source on the Net and putting it in another. Semantic Web is going to be an important feature of Web 3.0.

“Semantic Web will definitely grow as applications and tools use them. Semantic Web content will be seen as the most visible part of the Web,” says Priyank Garg, director - Product Management, Yahoo! India.

“Apart from that, we are doing a lot of work with reader generated content and opening our platform in various ways.”

Mobile computing is further likely to change the nature of how people use and conduct business on the Internet.

“The Net would have to change to address wider strata of society. This is especially true for India where a lot of people would be accessing the net through mobile and not from computer,” says Shah of Airtel.

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