Web 3.0: What about Search?
August 3, 2011
Consulting firm Booz & Company has published a new whitepaper, “Designing the Transcendent Web: The Power of Web 3.0.” A treatise on where we are headed online, the paper maps the contours of the road ahead.
Booze describes this new landscape:
“Imagine a world in which a movie search on your smartphone turns up only the kind of movies you like, and only those playing in your neighborhood. In which your behavior, inputs, and interactions on social networks automatically produce lists of recommendations, potential friends, even job offers. In which searching and browsing the Web becomes vastly more interesting and efficient, with results and link suggestions tailored specifically to your interests, and in which your ‘virtual representative,’ a kind of online personal assistant, keeps working to find you the best information even when you’re offline.”
Promising that this “transcendent Web” will drastically change the way we live and work, the paper is full of details. First, it examines the developments that led to this place. Next, it describes its key elements, how Web 3.0 is becoming a reality, and the impact they expect it will have. Finally, the work tells us how businesses can prepare to take advantage of the technology.
As with any piece produced by a consulting firm, our caveat is that these companies do create stuff to generate business. That being said, we recommend you check out this informative whitepaper.
However, keep in mind:
- Search is given little attention
- Consulting firms generate “output” in order to make sales, so the information may be appropriate to a consulting firm objective, not the reader’s
- The current Web seems to be shaping up to be a landscape filled with walled gardens, not the wide open information prairie of the Internet’s frontier days.
As we work through these white papers and position papers, we are starting to accept that search is little more than a utility. Search is not the main focus of consultants and, we think, of those with information problems.
Cynthia Murrell, August 3, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
