The FT once described Web 2.0 as the only under-hyped development in the history of the IT industry. With its tail between its legs after the bombing of the dot-coms, the marketing folks mis-calculated and mis-communicated the significance of the web moving from a static display to a participatory and transactional medium.

While most of the world is just getting to grips with the realities of services as a web property, we have to contemplate today the potential for where the web will lead us next in its 3.0 iteration. What is already clear is that certain motifs will be there: it will be personalised, it will be semantic, it will be mobile, it will be organised.

All of these inter-relate, but the facet that fascinates me is how the next generation of the Web will filter, manage, manipulate and present information. Personal information, meta information, business critical information will be acted on by the applet mash-ups of tomorrow to give us the viewpoint we want as individuals. Unlike its predecessor, your Web 3.0 will not be my Web 3.0 – and even my Web 3.0 experience will vary by context.

And a final prediction; just as Web 1.0 was never known as that (it was just called dot-com), so the next generation of the Web will not be known as 3.0. What will it be called? The Semantic Web? The Organic Web? I have no idea – but someone, somewhere does.

Julian Tanner