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Been keeping an eye on that masterful commentator Stowe Boyd ’cos he’s clearly thinking about the concept of flow (Traffic and Flow, Wired 1996. Go with the flow, Web 2.0 is over. Time for flow).  If I’m reading him right, we seem to be sharing a view that the web is moving away from the old ‘clunky’ version of Web 1.0 through Web 2.0 to a new ‘flowing’ version of the Web. Â
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We could call it Web 3.0. But that’s a naming convention that belongs to the old clunky legacy that we are leaving behind. A mindset where we categorize and shove things into well-defined and discrete boxes even though its clear that they often don’t really fit very well. This is the mindset that also makes so many of the currently available social applications socially naive and autistic in nature. Its a mindset that does not really fit anymore and a mindset that we have to leave behind if we are to move with the times. So what to call this next phase of the Web? The phase just after 2.0? ( We could call it after Stowe.)  For today I’ll just call it the Flowing Web.
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Specifically, the focus of the web is shifting away from people’s interests (Web 1.0) onto people themselves (Web 2.0) and then onto people in live action (the Flowing Web)
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The Web is ‘loosening up’ as it gets more and more social. Same process happened with the telephone. At first it was only used to convey ‘important’ information and indeed, those who ‘misused’ it for the purpose of idle chit chat were admonished, ridiculed and even punished by law. Nowadays, of course, idle chit-chat on the phone is encouraged and the value of idle chit-chat is recognized by users and providers alike.
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You can see parallels in how society is adjusting to the possibilities of the internet:
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Web 1.0: Web as a network connecting people around ‘heavy’ content. Light content was largely seen as irrelevant to those using the internet. Home pages declaring “Welcome to my home page. I’m going to update soon. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of my dog” were largely and deliberately filtered out and ignored by search engines and more or less disappeared from view. At this time, the internet was primarlily used as a tool to find quality information about subjects that interested those users. We knew we were in the middle of Web 1.0 when Google was the most trafficked website in Ireland.
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Web 2.0: Web as a network connecting people around ‘lighter content’. Here social networking sites gave a context and relevance to personal homepages- they displayed them within the highly personal and personally relevant context of an individuals social network. In this phase, people use the internet to find people they are interested in. We knew we were fully into Web 2.0 when Bebo recently superseded Google as the most trafficked website in Ireland.
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Where to next? What future does the flowing web hold for us? Well, we might expect the web to become a more dynamic network connecting the flow of people and ideas. The dynamism will be accelerated by users embracing light, short and informal interactions facilitated by the new tools as exemplified by twitter. We might expect these interactions to be of little consequence on their own but to reinforce existing relationships and promote the formation of new relationships in an light, undemanding, low expectation, informal context and environment. In this phase people use the internet to ‘be’ in the flow of things, to catch little bits of conversations, to suss out what’s going on as it happens, to chat, say hi and continue to move on and about, exploring, expanding, refining and surfing their social realm in a light and informal way. Twitter exemplifies a tool that enables light, informal flowing self publication and may well be to the Flowing Web what Friendster was to Web 2.0.
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Interesting times for innovators.
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