Web 3.0, What will it be? (Part 1)

Dennis popped this question when we met last month. I figured since everybody's making their predictions right now, I might as well do the same. To me, Web 3.0 will be characterized by two changes to how websites are designed. The two changes are the support for standalone content and the liberation of content from browsers.

1) Standalone Content

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 revolve around content filled websites. Take any commercial web portal as an example, regardless if its MSN.com, Yahoo! or even Gamespot.com. Each web page is stuffed with a mish mash of different pieces of information. These frontpages are designed to appeal to a wide range of visitors, nothing wrong there but something is definitely wrong when almost every single webpage uses this approach. Its almost like visiting a junkyard.

This snapshot of MSN's website seen below is a perfect illustration. The web page is visually broken into a set of boxes outlined in cyan (or light blue). On the right side a series of three vertical boxes, each containing top news stories from different sources. There is MSNBC news in the top window, followed by sports news from Fox in the middle window and money related news in the bottom window. Each of these boxed windows contains content that I consider as a "standalone" piece of information that is potentially useful to someone. So why not pull that small box out and put it on its own web page, without being cluttered by all the other junk?

The same can be said for most of the other boxes too. Yet strangely, MSN never does this for you. Clicking on the MSNBC news title only brings you to the MSNBC main page, which contains even more boxes containing different stuff.

My point is this, while holistically each box of content is probably interesting to some visitor to MSN, not a single visitor is interested in every box of content. To illustrate the potential usefulness of standalone content, look at the two webpages linked below:

Webpage 1: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/240087
Webpage 2: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/printerfriendly/240087?printFormat=photo

Both pages display the exact same cooking recipe for Roasted Halibut with Walnut Crust. Which webpage is more useful to you? I'm sure if you are preparing this recipe, the second standalone webpage which only contains the recipe is much for useful.

Standalone content is about delivering to the customer only stuff that they want, nothing more. That's it for today. I'll discuss part 2, "Liberating Content from Web Browsers" another day.