Web Trois

I was called into a brainstorming session last week for a prospective client that wanted to embrace web3. Que!? I hear you say. As a digital bod I was asked for my thoughts on the components that exemplified web3.

What instantly came to mind was “asynchronist, always on, cloud stuff and utilities”.

I shared my thoughts with the team and we jointly considered technologies, applications and things that were applicable to brief and the brand. The brainstorming session and the initial question subsequently made me think: these types of questions are going to be common quite soon. How is the web evolving? Which technologies should we be keeping an eye on?

I’ve done a bit of digging around and I’m not going to try and some up “web3″ because nobody should, but here are some important things that are shaping the web:

Semantics

RDF

HTML5

“Drag and Drop” Ajax based web applications

Lifestreaming

Fibre Optics

WiMax

All of the videos above might, well do, seem a bit geekish, but they all demonstrate how the web is continually evolving into a more networked and realtime environment.

Raw data will have more context around it and this will translate into more useful information; applications will move from the desktop to the cloud; search will become more social, aggregated and instantaneous; people will be social in more than one place, and this will mean lifestreams will have a greater significance.

Effects on media?

Hard to predict of course, but the first thing that springs to mind is that user destinations will change. We will be buying more media across social networks and web applications. Specialist rivals to Google, like Wolfram Alpha and Delicious, will make small scratches on their monopoly.

Improvements in our digital infrastructures will mean that we will be spending more time online and consuming more content. Entertainment will continue to be, a greater mishmash, delivered by iPlayers, Vodcasts, YouTube and Sky+.

I’m going to stop here because I don’t like prophesying and predicting, but you get the gist.