Web 1.0 Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 – What are the differences?

The evolution of the World Wide Web points out that many things happened in the brief period we enjoyed the Internet. Some experts claim that we have reached a stage that is the dawn of the next generation of web experience.

What do the numbers after “Web” indicate? These are the major milestones that define each Web progress, and each comes with concrete characteristics.

As web technology evolved, we produced better ways to utilize the Internet and how it helps us stay connected and do business. Each updated version denotes how technological innovations lead the use of the Internet into a new realm, with new psychological and social implications. For example, Web 1.0 herds passive readers, whereas in Web 2.0, these same readers double as content creators.

In the early days of the Internet, when things like TCP or “open architecture networks” were not common terms, few people suspected the viral nature of this innovative technology. Today, billions have smartphones and access to the Internet. The geometrical progression of tech adoption suggests that any changes related to the Web will become more frequent and more dramatic.

But how did it all start and develop into what we browse today? Let us peek at the brief history of the World Wide Web.

Web 1.0

Web 1.0 is what I call “The Bing Bang of the Internet.” This was when personal computers were mostly luxury items, and some people still raised eyebrows when “email” entered the conversation. The use rate of the wide web picked up with high speed later, of course, but during the initial spark, few technologies and people were part of it.

Web 1.0 was the paperboy of pre-Industrial Revolution times or, later, the television set. Just like television, the Internet gained momentum fast. The number of purchased TV sets grew from few thousand to a few million in just ten years. Web 1.0 arrived to be the better TV and much better than the prior paperboys.

One of the important inventions of the ‘first internet’ is the electronic shopping cart. The first eCommerce sites did not have the supply chain cooperation we have today with modern platforms, but they managed to induce the feeling in customers they can shop conveniently from home. That was a breakthrough step in commerce and still rings hard. The World Wide Web came to deliver products, news, and much more right at your fingertips. The convenience was immense, and it was just a matter of time before this trend evolved into its next development phase.

While the following two versions offer some drastic improvements, neither can compare to the colossal impact of the Mother of the Web (Web 1.0), which revolutionized the world in countless aspects.

Web 2.0

By the time the next World Wide Web version was out, content creators had gotten so good at content management tools that they had made them available to their readers. With the help of the newly formed social web, the content consumers became content contributors.

While 1.0 was, as some experts call it, a “read-only web,” Web 2.0 became “read and write.” It is dangerous to give the quill to just anybody. When a show host temporarily delegates his mic to a random person in the audience, there is rarely a Ted Talk quality in what comes next. The new interactive capabilities of ‘two points oh’ came with respective volumes of responsibility. We gave the guns to conscripts; now it is time we taught them how to shoot.

Web 2.0 give birth to something so viral that even some epidemics recoil in shame: social media. With tools available to users to post their content, it was clear that user-generated content (UGC) will be something marketers of the future must quickly apprehend and wove into their strategies.

Static content became dynamic, and readers became creators. Web 2.0 brought in the social web loaded with blog posts, comments, and shares. Colossal companies like Google or Facebook, which happened to host all these, began sorting them using content algorithms and brought user experience to a whole new level.

Web 3.0

After the World Web has organized itself into an elaborate network of creators and consumers, Web 3.0 elevates this progress a step further. Since the Web enables everyone to broadcast their unabridged opinion to the world, the idea of free speech took a dark tint and jeopardized to flood in and make truth indistinguishable from fiction.

As a result of the info war zone created by the users of the Semantic Web – another name for Web 3.0 – we are now constantly bombarded with content. After the rapid emergence of latest trends like NFTs, or the Metaverse, who knows what is next.

On the Internet, everyone is an author. Everyone with a camera can turn into a part-time news reporter in a split second. And when they do, it is our responsibility to judge sources’ credibility. Not everything that goes viral has the prescribed significance it radiates, yet everything is newsworthy unless proven otherwise. Trends come and go, and some are the side effects of the crowd co-interacting with the Web.

Web 3.0 introduces another important relationship paradigm. As applications became better (smart applications), they started to “learn” and “understand” what humans want. Before that moment, AI (Artificial Intelligence) had no problem reading code, but any human interface or input was an enigma.

With more meaningful data pieces streaming incessantly through the globe, data suddenly gains an immense value, powered by an AI-driven network of a hive-like mind.

As user interfaces became more user-friendly and easy to use, so did all the web applications. They scan and catalog millions of human-made input instances. Applications become better at reading humans, and at the same time, they improve on the horizontal scale: they better communicate with each other. This semantic web technology is one of the core features of Web 3.0 and can soon grow into a serious notable change.

Web 2.5

Web 3.0 is already something beyond a mere buzzword. We are one foot in it while the other is still lodged in Web 2.0. Some recognize this limbo moment as a Web 2.5 era. This temporary version indicates that the transitional move will not be too quick, despite the fast pace innate to technological advances.

We might spend time together in 2.5 for a while, but there is a good reason: the branch-off effect. While Web 3.0 attracts fresh new tech like cryptocurrency and progresses forward with it, Web 2.5 is more about developing established trends born during Web 2.0, like mobile technologies. The billions of mobile users are still here and are not going anywhere else soon. There is much to be explored in the mobile aspect, such as the undeniable benefits of progressive web apps (PWA) or other mobile solutions like home automation or the Internet of things (IoT).

The evolution of the Internet does not follow a straight line only, but branches off, and some of those secondary branches might become the ‘main branch’ at any moment.

Conclusion

Although we live in the Web 2.0 era, the push from new tech and its consequences has cemented the idea that we are on a new transition path. Web 3.0 arrives with the certainty of evolution. The move from Social Web to Semantic Web is a clear indicator that the future of the Web holds imminent changes.

The First Web ran data on static pages, the next turned information into an interactive experience, and the latest trend emphasizes the value of users as part-time authors. We can see how the inherent autonomy of crypto matches perfectly with the authority shift suggested with Web 3.0.

A huge chunk of what defines Web 3.0 has a lot to do with AI. We have developed machines that are now better interpreters of information that previously would only make sense to another human. Artificial intelligence can now read us “like a book,” helping us find what we are looking for, shedding the need for human intervention as it goes along.

As the newest Web galvanizes our digital horizons, we will keep writing about its influence on eCommerce and the future of the Internet. Stay tuned to our blog to learn more about it.