Forget Web 2.0, the EU is preparing for Web 3.0

Tagged with: web 3.0

Added by The Editor, about 1 month ago.

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If Web 2.0 was about user-generated content, blogs and social networking, Web 3.0 will be about online business services, GPS-based services, mobile TV and smart tags. At least that's the view of the European Union (EU), which put forward its policy framework for enabling Web 3.0 last week (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/index_en.htm)

Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, outlined her vision for Web 3.0: "Web 3.0 means seamless ‘anytime, anywhere' business, entertainment and social networking over fast reliable and secure networks. It means the end of the divide between mobile and fixed lines. It signals a tenfold quantum leap in the scale of the digital universe by 2015."

Business applications of social networking are already available, but the EU predicts Internet-based enterprise software will become more prevalent (growing 15 per cent worldwide between 2006 and 2011) and one billion phones will be able to exchange information to pay for things or get information from billboards by 2015.

It's an exciting vision of the not-to-distant future, but one that the EU believes will only come from investment in high-speed broadband access and support for innovation and research across Europe.