Web 2.0 has been here with us for some time now, and people here and there are starting to wonder what Web 3.0 would be like. Web 1.0 was the period of growing the physical internet, getting everybody online, and serving them loads of content all picked out and made nice just for them, through massive portals like Yahoo! and imitated by every ISP out there. The Web 1.0 era ended with the dot com bust, when it all got a bit too crazy in thinking up things for audiences to do, buy and see online. I hear some company still uses that silly sock puppet, though I’m not sure what he’s selling now.

The ‘eyeball economy’ model, where attention was supposed to become the new currency, survived, albeit in a very uncool fashion -sponsorships by way of shoving ads down an unsuspected user’s throat. ‘Free’ became more and more ’sponsored’. And with everybody online, it soon thereafter became an accepted model, but nothing as radical as once envisioned by the gurus, the moguls and frankly every other schmuck who didn’t know anything about economics.

Web 2.0 arrived more or less with the advent of blogging. All of a sudden, marketeers found out that people don’t really need to be entertained -they could entertain themselves. Who knew! Google picked up on it, and propelled it by using blogs as mere ‘online real estate’ to include its easy-on-the-eye textual ads (the term ‘online real estate’ still gives me the creeps, in its sort only outdone by your average socially dysfunctional network admin who speaks of his ‘desktop real estate’ when referring to his three monitors, a keyboard and a mouse). Pandora’s box was opened, we had a working business model that even went beyond the visioning going on in the late nineties -readers/buyers were made part of the value chain, by turning them into the content providers for others, and helping in produce a sale, at almost zero incremental cost.

Of course, this wasn’t limited to blogging, which truly democratized and revolutionized the way journalism is being done, but soon after all sorts of vatiations of this theme started to come about. The formula has been the same almost everywhere: start a community, provide tools to let people share stuff and get the word out, and make money off it by lacing it with ads. Social network sites, video sharing sites, bookmark sharing, online collaboration, every idea conceived since 2002 or thereabout shares these elements to some extent. Web 2.0 is all about getting you to do the legwork for people selling you stuff.

So what about Web 3.0? There’s a number of ways to look at the ‘3.0′. If you’re a Web 2.0 veteran, then you’re likely thinking about the future of social networks, or the next ‘killer web app’ that will drive even more people to do your bidding. If you’re an application designer, you might think about people building their own applications and running it all themselves, in one big peer to peer pyramid scheme, where the guy unleashing something at the top only has to collect money, while the rest sweats over making it work in order to get some small pickings. Maybe you’re a Web 1.0 veteran, and your dreams are with mobile integration, in which case I would congratulate you -the mobile internet is a first peak of Web 3.0.

I like to think of Web 3.0 as completely unrelated to Web 2.0, which to me is more of an evolution in marketing, a facet of the internet -a very important facet, yes, because it drives a lot of investments. But this is also because other, hidden revenue streams still await us.

Web 3.0 to me is the Stealth Internet. It is the use of the internet on other devices than a PC or laptop. The first steps are visible already: mobile services to use on your mobile phone or wifi enabled PDA, but these are still very reminiscent of ‘terminals’ and thus don’t really qualify to be Web 3.0. Having an Xbox at home and download video games over Xbox Live, or playing with your buddies is coming closer -we are connected to the internet, using the technology, but there is no computer in sight. Calling a sales hotline, and being led down a menu (the horror!) and having voice recognition software parse your speech and analyse your order, communicating it to the supplier and software calling you back with shipping status updates at regular intervals, with everything being routed over VOIP to and from a server in India (ha!) -that is Web 3.0. When your car is fitted with an IP address and a wifi card, and from your garage checks in all by itself and makes an appointment with the dealership for maintenance, using your online calendar (ehm, yeah, shared with your car -bear with me!) -that is Web 3.0. There are many more examples thinkable, a lot in the area of home automation, and all share a common thread. Web 3.0 will take the internet out of the PC, and put it in everything else. And this time, we will be clear on who is selling us what ;)

Web 3.0 is being built, but will not be upon us in the short term. Small advances (think Apple’s upcoming home entertainment system, Microsoft’s Zune that can download songs without a PC, calling directory assistence and being helped by a computer, GPS/sattelite internet navigation for your sail boat with integrated weather reports), until one provider hits it big with a killer app and mass adoption will open all the VC funds.

One final note. Web 2.0 is (even though my harsh comments may have made it seem a bit like a big commercial scam) about empowerment of the end user. Web 3.0 does not interfere with that, in the sense that it’s much more of a synthesis between old technology that’s been in your home and your personal life for ever, and networking it, giving it a human touch and letting it communicate with other appliances, service providers and you. Though the things Web 3.0 will do for you will be much like with Web 1.0 -we decide what you can do, Web 2.0 will continue to evolve -especially with all that extra free time on our hands.

For some time now, there is a debate going on how best to serve ads to millions of users of online video content. Should the page on which the video appears be filled to the rim with text and banner ads? Should there be a small commercial at the start, or at the end, and how long should it be as not to annoy the viewer?

Seems Google postponed taking a decision on this. Yesterday they announced on their official blog (which is turning more corporate by the day almost) that they found another way, by making the ad an intricate part of the video itself. Google calls it their Sponsored Video Program.

So Google is cheerfully announcing the ‘web exclusive’ video for part two of that whacky Diet Coke and Mentos fountain experiment by EepyBird. Paid for by Coca Cola and Mentos, who I’m sure did some creative consulting as well.

I think they call this product placement, or advertorial, also known to the more serious film makers as selling out. I doubt this Google program has the scalability to be implemented with lots of videos, but it’s fascinating to see (although not surprising anymore) that their first steps in this field go straight for the holy grail of advertisement.

Google woke up this morning to find that Youtube was probably worth a bit less than the $1.65 billion they agreed to pay in stocks for it, now that Comedy Central pushed the video giant to delete all of its Daily Show and other copyrights infringed material from its site, some of the most popular content on the site for a while now.

The result of all this will probably be that Youtube will strike a deal with Comedy Central to get the content back -but rather than shared by viewers, it will become distributed by Comedy Central themselves. In the end of course, Youtube will become slicker and more corporate, and the channels will become dominated by online tv channels.

So what about all the home videos which helped in making Youtube the dominant provider? If I were that annoying girl that was outed on Youtube a while back as an actress trying to make a name for herself (kudos btw, that was a class act, her boring stories notwithstanding), I’d take a serious look at Metacafe and do the math. Metacafe is offering a program called Producer Rewards, and it looks really interesting. I strongly believe that people’s videos get seen in great part not because of throngs of people surfing Youtube all day, but simply because it gets mentioned or embedded on a blog, or is mailed around. If you accept that, then there really is no need to put it on Youtube (although, admitted, having it star as a featured video on the main page doesn’t hurt) -any site would do.

If Metacafe is able to attract, by way of handing out cold cash for content, all the stupid, funny and weird videos, they might gain a foothold. I mean, if you’re going to post your video which you think is cool, why not run the chance of making some money off it? You bet that film students, indy film makers might show up too -from what Metacafe explains, getting your average ‘Bush is a liar’ vid out to say 200 thousand viewers, you make $1000 -that’s a lot of money, even for a conspiracy theorist.

Both Youtube and Metacafe take control of the rights of your production, once you upload it to their servers, and both aim to make money off it. The only difference is that one pays you for the privilige, the other doesn’t. As the concept isn’t new (Revver tried it, and so did upstarts like Guba and Flixya -all without lots of success), it doesn’t mean this time it won’t -it’s all about educating users, and your content along with that of your co-Youtube users getting sold on from under your nose for 1.65 billion should be quite educational.