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Key elements of a Web 3.0 online network

Related reading: Category – Online network building blocks | Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 explained

The common elements of a Web 3.0 online social, industry or political networks are:

Community of common interest

  • Common interest (industry, political, environmental)
  • Focus collective knowledge and effort
  • Individual contribution toward objectives through content

Person to person (or Peer to Peer)

  • Intellectual property is no longer necessary to encourage distribution channels or innovation. Opaque channels can be replaced with transparent online social, industry and political networks.
  • Facilitate collaboration and information distribution from point to point
  • Web 3.0: Online networks allow people to see through the market and facilitate collective matching, learning and consumption in hours (not months)

User created content/industries

  • Profiles of market participants
  • Content (classifieds and news) encompasses all information in target market
  • Individual contribution toward objectives
  • Self-published content
  • Each member links content to their profile

Comprehensive, community driven content and workflow management

  • Self-publish
  • Comprehensive content management (profiles of community members, Classifieds, News, other specific information)
  • Workflow of community inputs (information, discussion, ratings) to outputs (outcomes, objectives, actions required)
  • Links
  • Community ratings to prioritise content. Content prominence is determined by “digg” style community voting systems, rather than those individuals that can access Web 1.0 channels
  • Featured content
  • Wiki
  • Forums for each item of content

The ratings of content and linking between content determines the value prominence of the content. In Web 1.0, prominence of content was determined by the capacity of an individual to access a Web 1.0 channel.

Distributed, borderless management

  • Quality managed by community and supervised by network owners/sponsors
  • Network management, development and support is distributed across borders coordinated by groupware  technology

Attractive target markets

  • Opaque channels and cottage industries
  • Web 1.0 markets that distribute only and are able to charge premium pricing because they are opaque
  • Market participants are willing to pay to view or distribute information (Average revenue per user > USD1000 per annum )
  • Content types manage all information : profiles, classifieds, news, market prices

Scalable open source web applications

  • Scalable
  • Open source for innovation and maintenance of basic functionality
  • Modified for target market
  • The community provides the basic functionality
  • Build the specific functionality required

On demand “Cloud” web hosting

  • Amazon Web Services provides cheap, scalable web hosting that automatically scales depending on user demand. Please read category Internet applications and hosting.

Memorable domain names

  • Singular two word generic names
  • Represent market participants or functions
  • Memorable
  • Custom URL’s for profiles
  • email addresses for members

Individual branding

  • Community ratings of individuals become more important than company branding

Potential sources of revenue

  • subscription fees for member profiles
  • fees for custom URL’s (or domain names) that link to a profile and email addresses
  • content publishing fees publishing content (news or classifieds)
  • commission on events
  • transaction fees for successful transactions
  • market data fees
  • commission on order execution

Semantic search

Keyword search can not help us find what we are looking for in Web 3.0. Semantic search will be critical to Web 3.0. Semantic search will add meaningful tags to content or information. You will search based upon tags rather than keywords. Online networks will provide the forum to self-publish, tag and search for content.

The following financial market questions can be answered by semantic search (and not keyword) search.

  • “I need some insurance and thinking of investing in a China market fund fund” – retail investor
  • “I am looking for $5-10m  Chinese technology companies to help grow” – Adviser
  • I am looking for internet and biotechnology companies in Asia Pacific?” - Investor
  • I am making an investment in a foreign company. I need a local freelance adviser to monitor my investment” – Investor
  • “I need a lawyer, corporate adviser, underwriter, investors and broker experienced in UK technology listings – Company