Like most weekends, the news day is slow, so I try to take a few moments out of the day to speculate on the future of the web. Specifically, I want to give you folks a better idea of what Web 3.0 will look like.

So far, I have defined Web 3.0 and given you a look at some of the technologies that will enable it. Now I am going to take a step back and look at what blogging will be like in a Web 3.0.

Defining Web 3.0

As always, I think it would be best to start off with a definition of Web 3.0. I define the new web as:

Highly specialized information silos, moderated by a cult of personality, validated by the community, and put into context with the inclusion of meta-data through widgets.

In layman’s terms it is a web that is powered by creative combinations of easily available meta-data. Think of it as the Widget Web. What does that have to do with blogging, you might ask. Just about everything.

Microblogging

Microblogging will be the critical change in the way we write in Web 3.0. Imagine a world where your mobile phone, your email, and you television could all produce feedback that could easily be pushed to any or all blogging platforms. If you take a picture from your smart-phone, it would be automatically tagged, bagged and forwarded to your “lifestream”. If you rated a television show that you were watching, your review would be forwarded into the stream.

This is the type of seamless integration that will finally bring the concept of blogging to the masses. Posts will become shorter and more topical, the world of rehashing the meme will be replaced by one where living and news generation go hand in hand. Blogging won’t be a hobby reserved for internet enthusiasts, but a past time for the MySpace generation.

Of course, the allure of any individual blog would be much more limited. As the popularity of micro-blogging explodes, more and more basically “unreadable” blog will start to populate the blogosphere. It’s not hard to imagine a world where the vast majority of your posts amount to, “stuck in traffic, ugh…”

Fortunately, microblogging also opens up the world to new opportunities. Live blogging, a technique usually reserved for important events, would become common. If you can’t actually be at a conference, pictures, video and commentary could be pushed to you in real time. The entire world would become an Op-Ed piece.

Refined searching methods would also transform blog writers into brands themselves. Since everything would be happening in near real-time, it’s the writer who can get to the event and convey it most convincingly that will draw the crowds. Everyone has the same information, the question will be who makes you want to read it.

Related Companies: Jiaku, Tumblr, Twitter

RSS Integration

Web 3.0 will be the age of the RSS. Web services will enable you to blog from anywhere, and RSS will enable you to combine all of these divergent feeds into one coherent picture. Blogs themselves will be reduced to a stream of consciousness interspersed with longer, traditional news pieces. Where one we could only hope to get one or two posts written a day, it won’t be strange to have two dozen posts in one afternoon on a Web 3.0 enabled blog.

If you want to take a peek into the future, look at web services like Twitter or Facebook status.
These streams only ask for one line worth of information describing exactly what you are doing at the moment. As a result, they provide extremely concise, constantly updated information. Unfortunately, neither one of these services currently provide RSS, but it is unlikely that the Twitter’s of Web 3.0 will make the same choice.

Think of your blog as a combination off all the pseudo-blogging tools that you will be using in a few years. Your Flickr feed and your Jaiku account, your Upcoming calendar and the latest Google maps mashup. Your blog will, in short, be a close approximation to who you are.

Related Companies: iGoogle, Netvibes

Choosing Not To Blog

As blogging becomes more invasive, a common societal backlash will be those who simply refuse to do it. Even if they do blog, it will be within walled gardens so that they can tightly control who has access to this “lifestream”. Generally, people are more than willing to give information out online, as long as they are given the option to make that information private. In Web 3.0 access control and role based privacy features will be the speaking points of the day.

Mobile Technology

Some new places that you will be able to push information to your blog from.

  • Mobile Phones
  • Video Game Consoles
  • Smart Watches
  • Pedometers
  • Your Local Gym

If it produces data, it is likely there will be a method to upload that data and a universal format (like RSS) to push that data into whichever receptacle you deem appropriate.

Related Projects: Lifebits

Summary

  • One massive blog containing all of your feeds
  • Blog from anywhere
  • Lifestreaming replacing typical blog journalism
  • Internet fame based around being able to tell the story of your life most effectively through feeds.

Blogging in the future will be much less like Journalism, and much more like Microsoft’s Lifebits project. It will be easy, transparent and as much a part of how we live as email. Enabled by advanced searching capability, there is little doubt that the superstars of tomorrow may be those with the most “readable” lives.


Related

Defining Web 3.0

A Timeline of Web 3.0 Speculation.

Enabling Technologies in Web 3.0