What exactly marks the difference between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0? I read these terms all the time, is there a good explanation?
2.0 was when databases and ajax (JavaScript async) started to take over as a web content delivery form. Often content delivery moved from semantic page navigation flows to "single page applications" where the client state was often held client side and pushed to the server when asking for new content.
3.0 is the marketing term for crypto based projects that are trying to sell "a brand new web" where there are no longer centralized services providing content, and somewhere it all gets glued together with crypto forgetting that most of the modern web users are running on cell phones with limited cpu and more importantly battery constraints. It's also part of a proud group of technologies that garnered a catchy marketing term to describe the movement before the practical implementations emerged (much unlike web 1.0, 2.0 before it).
I don't believe that their version of the term web 3.0 really took off the way that the web 2.0 buzzword did, but I vaguely understand the term having a meaning independent of the meaning given to it by crypto enthusiasts.
Wikipedia backs me up too[0].
> 08:27, 24 October 2006 Lumos3 talk contribs 18,470 bytes +36 Web 3 redirects here so should be shown as a synonym
So at the end of 06 Wikipedia was referring to semantic web already as Web 3. The first release of bitcoin wasn't until 09.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Semantic_Web&oldi...
Web 2.0 is the transition from homepages and webmasters to content and platforms, users are producing the content and platform owners get rich off ads. It also coincides with the shift to AJAX and web applications that had logic in the front-end, but this isn't really part of the actual definition.
Web 3.0 was briefly the semantic web. It didn't really take off and was largely forgotten when the cryptobros relaunched the term. New Web 3 is all about using decentralization, blockchains and cryptocurrencies and NFTs to somehow solve the problems with Web 2.0.
Back in 2005, “web 2.0” was a marketing term meant to indicate optimism that dynamic web applications could transcend the economic disappointments of the dot-com boom and bust. It was always nebulous and poorly defined, and the only reason we’re talking about “web 2.0” almost two decades later is the aforementioned crypto promoters.
It was first implemented (non-standard) around 2001 in Windows 2000, Outlook and IE 5. Subsequently other browsers (Mozilla in particular) adopted it and it became a def facto standard.
Not every site the uses/used Ajax is fully Web 2.0, but they are definitely not 1.0. The affect on web development was transformative, resulting in "DHTML", or Dynamic HTML. Webmail, for example, in the gmail, first released in 2004, you see a fully Web 2.0 site. You might say it's the beginning of what's called the Single Page Application. At a time when the average home internet connection was still pretty slow over dial-up, eliminating most round-trips was a game-changer.
- usually no or minimal javascript
- minimal CSS, leaning on default styles
- feels like a passion project by one person or a small group
- design is usually minimal and completely lacking in any “techniques” used to manipulate you
- usually isn’t trying to sell you anything