Comment by bdcravens
1 year ago
Web 3 as you described it never existed.
I think Web 3 is more the TikTok and other mass content tools. Still dependent on their parties, but it's shifted to more access to rich content and more access, rather than the curated pinhole view of "posts", especially when it comes to live feeds.
I would really like web3 to go back to distributed networks. Fediverse and all that. I guess cryptocurrencies fit in there too; I guess web3 would have its light and dark side. But decentralisation would be a nice theme.
TikTok isn't really fundamentally different from the stuff we consider web2, is it?
(I actually think imposing these artificial "generations" on web evolution is silly, but if we're going to do it, I'd prefer to use it to steer it towards something positive.)
>TikTok isn't really fundamentally different from the stuff we consider web2, is it?
Yes, it is. It's only superficially similar (technically "user-generated" content). It's a qualitative difference. The fundamental difference is human-curated vs algorithmic. You go on youtube or instagram or tiktok and all you see is what the algorithm pushes: usually the shittiest most junk content imaginable. It's a qualitative difference from having your blogs and following links and etc.
The other main difference is of course that it's now all commercial. Everything everywhere, be it a google search for "best blender" to a youtube frontpage, is trying to sell you stuff or to make you click on ads. It contaminates everything.
But what about this is TikTok specific? Google and Facebook have done the exact same thing for ages.
I think Web N isn't about the actual tech being used, it's about the way the tech is being used and how it interacts with the real world and our society. Web 1 was HTML informational web sites, maybe some chat rooms and games here and there but not much affect on the real world. Web 2 was/is the "web app" where you can transact various business online, and group into communities and stuff and which is well integrated into our lives. Web 3, I think, is currently being formed and I have no idea what it is, but whomever can figure that out will be the first nrillionaire or whatever. The tech itself is just all the same if/else statements in a different order.
It's interesting because, at the time of Web 2, it was not only the "social media" proposition the only one, but also AJAX as well as more Javascript-driven websites (with more interaction potential). It was also the time of widgets and iframes, where all kinds of interesting 3rd party integrations appeared, like the bookmarklets (remember Yahoo Pipes, netvibes, RSS?). Unfortunately, the seed of advertising pretty much killed the rest over time.
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The advent of the smartphone and touchscreen is essentially the defining characteristic of Web 2.0 and we haven't really approached Web 3.0+ in any meaningful way, in my experience. However, I am not a computer architecture/hw guru, yet I still expect the future to be pleasantly surprising despite this, erm, rather unnecessarily difficult time.
The big hurdle is that for some reason people think that video content cannot be decentralized and that building off-platform brands tend to be a lot harder then playing the algorithm for most professional creators.
Web3 as a brand is probably dead having been tarnished by association with the cryptoscam community, but there is some hint that the zeitgeists is for both creators and consumers wanting a more direct relationship that can only really come via more decentralization of control.
Isn't TikTok solidly Web 2? It does not do any revolutionary. Maybe 2.3, but certainly it is pretty much same as for example Youtube. Just done bit differently.
I'm not sure how people forgot this but Web 2.0 wasn't about Facebook etc as they are today. It was about content creation and blogging and social media was just a way to blog and create content.
Web 2.0 was all about networks and sharing. Heck, one of the biggest ideas at the time was "mashups". If-This-Then-That (IFTTT) got its start there. Yahoo! Pipes was a thing. Websites would freely provide RSS feeds you could not only subscribe to in your Reader but also use to create your own news feed in your dashboard that also showed you the latest issue of your favorite webcomic, the weather forecast and a stock ticker. Everything was beta. Most of it was free. Much of it could be fed into other things. Scraping was for hobbyists, not startups.
If anything, the walled gardens were Web 2.1. When companies realized that keeping data inside the platform rather than sharing it makes it easier to monetize.
I think if we're going with version numbers it also makes sense to describe the dot-com bubble as Web 1.0 as the biggest change that led to it was the massive increase in the number of people with Internet access making the Web commercially interesting (or viable). What some HNers fondly remember as the old Web is either the late pre-Web 2.0 days with webrings, Geocities and personal hobby websites (the latter eventually being supplanted by blogs, tumblr, livejournal and so on) or the pre-Web 1.0 days when most websites were hyperspecific hobby projects written by technophiles and hosted on Internet connected potatos or their university's web server.
There was a difference between hosted blogs, forums etc before and the new 'social-fied' ones we have now. It's not revolutionary, but it's a big enough change from 2 when that started to warrant some different tag imho. Blogs on blogger etc you still discovered yourself, now it's just an endless stream of garbage I don't care about (even though 'it knows me') with ads 'sprinkled' (hosed) in there on most platforms.
These version numbers are for marketing. None of them are revolutionary, only the web itself is.
Is TikTok even "Web"? I bet 99% of its userbase have never used it on the Web.
> Web 3 as you described it never existed.
But it's been talked about this way a lot. Think of the ... in Rust posts but replace it with ... on the blockchain.
Btw where are the ... in Rust posts? They've been replaced by ... with AI?
Yes, but I'd describe it more like Web 2.5 is basically the gross-weaponization of gossip as a glorified get-rich-quick pyramid scheme. There is little-to-no reason for this mode of thinking in 2024 and beyond, if we are to realize anything resembling actual human potential.
Until a more equitable society exists, we will likely not see a legitimate Web 3.0+, in my estimation.
Full disclosure: I'm a cusper Xillenial who thinks Elon Musk is an idiot and hopes he can find some actual value somewhere hidden in the depths of his colossal failures, plural.
I think Web 3 is already here; it is your browser that has millions of LOC and that is more powerful then ever before. There are hundreds and thousands of useful browser extensions and I think we should build around that ecosystem. Mix powerful web browser and its extension ecosystem with DeFi and other decentralized solutions and we should get some interesting use cases and apps.