This is a reprint from my old blog with the original timestamp.   

So I’m getting ready to go to the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco and it got me thinking. And looking at the schedule. At the top they have interesting quotes from people that are generally relevant to Web 2.0. They are all pretty insightful – I think I saw them all hitting refresh to try to get back to the one I wanted to talk about. It is:

“Web 1.0 was making the Internet for people, Web 2.0 is making the Interent better for computers.”

-Jeff Bezos

Then it hit me. Have we already moved past Web 2.0? Because last year Web 2.0 was all about XML and web services and all the fun things you could do with them. Things like RSS, metadata, and other neat things. Things that are still really important and cool. But not the things I think most people are talking about when they say web 2.0 now.

People are talking more about user-created content when they say web 2.0 now. Things like social bookmarking, wikis, community search, social networking, etc. This is great (especially for (obligatory plug) Shadows(end plug), but is it signalling a redefinition of Web 2.0?

Or are we really in Web 3.0?

1. (1.0) The web is, well, web pages. People can consume them.
2. (2.0) There are now web services. Value-added and affiliate sites, RSS, meta-sites, etc.
3. (3.0) User generated content. Social bookmarking, wikis, community search, etc.

These make for nice integer versions, but I’m sure there was 1.5 (Google) and maybe something else. And obviously there were at least some blogs before 2.0 and that is clearly user generated content.

Really though, I’m not going to give you an answer. I merely raise the question.