Must We Really Move Up to Three?  Just when B2B marketers felt they had mastered Web 2.0, along comes talk of Web 3.0. Yikes. So what's the talk all about? And must you listen to it?
In a recent post at the B2B Insights Blog, J. Leigh Brown offers a brief overview of Web 1, 2 and 3 to clarify their differences. If you're reassessing your website for 2010, this breakdown might come in handy. Some highlights:
Web 1.0: One-way information flow. "Web 1.0 was the Web as an information portal," Brown says. "Content was owned. … Publishing was static with no interaction."
Web 2.0: From publishing to participation. Then along came the savvy, demanding user. "Web 2.0 (coined in '99, made popular in '04) revolves around information-sharing and collaboration," says Brown. "It's about user-generated content … and the power of the community to create and validate information."
Typical examples, Brown notes, now include "blogs, forums, communities, social networking, video & image sharing, wikis, mashups, tagging, and content syndication." Whew.
Isn't that enough to keep prospects and clients happy for months to come? Maybe.
Web 3.0: Marketing buzzword, or unrealized vision? "Web 3.0 (made popular in '06) is a large work in progress," Brown writes, "and it crosses into several different areas: semantic Web, personalization, intelligent search, and mobility."
So why must marketers consider going there? "You could say that Web 3.0 is an intelligent Web 2.0," Brown explains. "The vision is that the Web understands how to personalize your experience and recommend what you are looking for—and lets you take it with you."
Question is: Might 3.0 help form a better version of your B2B site? Not necessarily, Brown says. The best version, she says, is "the one that is … the best solution for your site visitors. Whether it's 1.5 or 3.0, it has to be right for your audience."
The Po!nt: No need to change just for the sake of change. Upgrading a B2B website works best when it matches the latest applications to prospect and client needs.
Source: B2B Insights Blog. Read the full post here.
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