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Should You Get a Jump on Web 3.0 Before Understanding Web 2.0?
March 21, 2008

I’ve written in this space many times about so-called “Web 2.0,” or the “second generation” of the Web that takes into account user-generated content, blogs, podcasts, and other platforms that have democratized access to information in a way we haven’t seen since the advent of the printing press. And now, in the past couple of weeks, I have seen growing references (well, more like inferences, actually) to what is being called “Web 3.0.” A bit on the crazy side? After all, most folks have only just started to wrap their heads around Web 2.0—or even Web 1.0.

So what is Web 3.0? It is still largely hypothetical, but Wikipedia, a Web 2.0 phenomenon, says:

Some believe that emerging technologies such as the Semantic Web will transform the way the Web is used, and lead to new possibilities in artificial intelligence. Other visionaries suggest that increases in Internet connection speeds, modular web applications, or advances in computer graphics will play the key role in the evolution of the World Wide Web.

However, others have intimated that Web 3.0 is the result of a backlash against certain elements of Web 2.0, embodied by that very Wikipedia. In other words, Web 3.0 to some implies a return to vetted content, editors, and experts, as opposed to uncredentialed users providing information. Says a recent Newsweek article:

Sites like YouTube and Wikipedia collect the creations of unpaid amateurs while kicking pros to the curb—or at least deflating their stature to that of the ordinary Netizen. But now some of the same entrepreneurs that funded the user-generated revolution are paying professionals to edit and produce online content.

In short, the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web. “People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information,” says Charlotte Beal, a consumer strategist for the Minneapolis-based research firm Iconoculture. Beal adds that choice fatigue and fear of bad advice are creating a “perfect storm of demand for expert information.”

Last month, I wrote about using the idea of becoming an “expert” as a way of boosting sales and marketing efforts. If so-called Web 3.0 is in fact to mark the triumphant return of the expert, then the time is certainly ripe for marketing yourself or your company as an expert. And there is also another potent driving force of the expert movement:

Fueling all this podium worship is the potential for premium audiences—and advertising revenue. “The more trusted an environment, the more you can charge for it,” says Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis, a former AOL executive who was previously involved with several Web start-ups. It’s also easier to woo advertisers with the promise of controlled content than with hit-and-miss blog blather. “Nobody wants to advertise next to crap,” says Andrew Keen, author of “The Cult of the Amateur,” a jeremiad against the ills of the unregulated Web.

It should be no secret to anyone who has spent any amount of time online—or even on Wikipedia—that misinformation abounds. Not that experts are always right, of course; I have been writing about graphic communications for the better part of the past 15 years and I still get things wrong. To err is human...and all that. But there is a growing demand for information and advice that can be trusted. How do you convey your or your company’s own expertise in a chosen field? Well:

• Tout experience. How long have you been in your chosen field? How long has your company been serving customers? If you’re a new company, where have you worked before? Companies and owners are not torn from the thigh of Zeus; play up the collective experience of your staff online and in promotional literature.
• What academic degrees do your company’s principals have? Not that a degree is necessarily any indication of “expertise”—if you are dispensing medical advice, for example, sating you are a “doctor” is misleading if all that means is you have a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. However, it does mean that you are likely to be an expert in...mechanical engineering.
• Cite customer testimonials. Surely you have customers who have been satisfied with the work you have done for them. Ask them to provide a sentence, paragraph, or what have you that shows your experience and expertise.
• Get published. Academics look for publication in peer-reviewed journals to confer credibility. Likewise, getting published in some fashion in a respected trade publication in your field goes a similarly long way toward conferring credibility upon you and your company as experts. And while blogging is useful, the self-publishing aspect of it makes it less credible than publication in a professional publication. This is not to say that blogging is bad; but since everyone can do it—and it seems that everyone does do it—it doesn’t automatically confer expertise. (I know several well-respected experts in the graphic arts that adamantly refuse to blog for that very reason.)

User-generated content will always have its place in cyberspace, but it seems likely that experts are back, and we should welcome them. And, let’s remember, that we should do our best to become one of them.

Posted by Richard Romano on March 21, 2008 | Comments (0)