In a recent article in Ad Age Digital, Judy Shapiro discusses the oft-ballyhooed Web 3.0 and what it actually means. She boils it down to a semantic web type of environment where intelligent agents are bounding about on the social web for you bringing you information recommended by others.
She raises the question of how reliable that information will be if it’s brought to you by a paid “digital butler” rather than a trusted friend. Touché, Judy. That’s the essence of the social web. To have information passed to you by that friend you’ve come to trust. Not a digital butler than does your mercenaric bidding.
Too much today do people in social networks allow “friends” in that aren’t really friends. If you do that, well, then you really can’t trust highly those sources of information that they bring to you. Such a circle of friends might be analogous to that mercenaric digital butler, except they don’t get paid. Now that’s not to say that can’t become true friends; perhaps they can. But it’ll take time, likely more time than that required for making a friend in the physical world.
So, I’ll agree with Judy that until the trust factor increases, Web 3.0 might be elusive. Perhaps we can all make it less elusive by tending our friends-garden a little more closely.
