The web has evolved a lot since the ‘90s. We have known Web 1.0, we are living today in the Web 2.0 era and are slowly moving towards Web 3.0.
It seems there is one thing in common and that is the “0”. This zero shows that we are speaking of an evolution or maybe even a small revolution.
Web 2.0 has provided us with interactive web applications, features and services such as blogs, mashups, social networks, wikis and others. We have moved from an individual user’s perspective to a community approach, keeping in mind that it always revolves around the user’s personal experience.
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With Web3.0 also known as Semantic Web, we intend to go a step further. The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work cooperatively.
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The idea is to have computers tap into metadata and create meaningful relationships without the need for a powerful artificial intelligence. The Web will be linked in a way that it can be used more effectively across various applications.
The Semantic Web will contain and link resources corresponding to several kinds of objects such as media (images, clips, etc.), people, places, organizations and events.
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Web visionaries have been working for some time on this new evolution. Semantic web is a combination of crowd sharing, done today to an extent through tags, natural language processing and machine learning techniques.
Semantic web could change the Web the same way Windows’ metaphoric desk replaced the textual DOS at the end of the last century. A semantic browser will learn from the user’s behaviour and adapt its links.
Gradually and with the help of mind maps and virtual worlds, the web could become an adaptive platform represented by a metaphor based on the user’s interests. This however, is a future step which might result in introducing Web 4.0.
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This brings us to Advertising 3.0, an information-rich model where adverts become more relevant and grow to become content. Though it may sound very tempting, the underlying risk is that message and facts can be mixed-up. I believe there is great potential, but like my spandex-clothed friend once learned – with great power comes great responsibility.
The ZackBrandit team believes in the necessity to support a rich and relevant Web. Information is as valuable as the meaning we endow it with. But meaning does not necessarily indicate factual data; life is indeed more than just facts, it is also about the way we as people apprehend the information. At the end of the day, it is us who give meaning to words.
Zack’s Profiling System (ZPS) transforms a particular blog, brand or product into a set of elements perceptually annotated by users. The idea is to offer meaningful categorization based on pertinent criteria. We would like to know how people perceive blogs, brands and products, how they categorise them and use this data to create new relationships.
If the actual rating systems are linear and provide one result for a specific product (usually an amount of points or stars), ZPS has the unique capacity of linking up to 8 different criteria, thus resulting in meaningful profiles. The profile is the result of crowd participation and therefore brings the user’s perceptive meaning into our database. Hence the possibility to introduce a new browsing approach reflecting one’s moods, feelings and personal view.
It is not a replacement, nor is it semantic web. ZPS is a smart but standardised tagging system that will more easily support the arrival of Web 3.0 and its share of advertising.
And we are those embodying it!
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