The Internet has been around since the mid 1990s. What started off as ARPANET, a project by the US military, the Internet was subsequently made available to the public. Looking back, Internet historians and tech gurus have dubbed this era as the era of Web1.0. In 2004, the first true social media site appeared, known as Multiply. This heralded the beginning of Web 2.0. In 2008, there was a financial crisis that affected many countries in the world. Low interest rates and low lending standards by banks fuelled a housing price bubble in the United States. Globally, financial institutions were taking huge risks with lending as well. When repayments weren’t forthcoming, many banks and financial institutions were left with huge amounts of debt. Bitcoin was created as a reaction to this. The decentrallisation of Bitcoin across the blockchain meant to its creators that it would not be subjected to the ills of of a centralised economy where the effects of a financial crisis in one country could send ripples to other countries, resulting in a worldwide crisis. This heralded the beginning of web3. Now, it is not quite clear why the spelling of web3 doesn’t follow the same spelling convention of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Some say that web3 is just a stylistic way to express Web 3.0. Others say that web3 is spelled as such so as to differentiate it from the original “Web 3.0”, which is a theory and vision of Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee referred to Web 3.0 as “the semantic web”, which is based on a different technological infrastructure that the Internet we know today. Whatever the reason may be, we can say that the meta history of the Internet so far can be summarised as Web 1.0 moving to Web 2.0 to web3, with web3 being the third iteration of the Internet.
Do note that this hasn’t stopped many tech theorists to predict further transformations of the Internet. Some have predicted web4, where mobile technology has created a situation where humans and their mobile phones become inseparable such that there is a fusion between the human and the cyber. Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, has the vision of creating a web5, where users have control over their own data. In fact, all the way back in 2018, Steffen Staab from the University of Stuttgart proposed a method of structuring knowledge in Web 7.0 in a conference paper at The Web Conference 2018. Personally, I wouldn’t pay too much attention yet to anyone who claims that we have moved beyond web3. There just hasn’t been neither enough technological nor cultural developments for us to really consider this happening just yet.
Now, each iteration of the Internet has served different sets of customers. This article will delve into the different consumers for each iteration of the internet, with special emphasis on the new consumers in the web3 era.
What did we have back in Web 1.0? Email was introduced in that era, as well as websites. Emails were based on SMTP (Snail Mail Transfer Protocol) and POP3 (Post Office Protocol). Websites ran on the HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) backbone. We also had Usenet groups which ran on FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and Internet Relay Chat programs which ran on P2P (Peer to Peer).
In early Web 1.0, before the Windows GUI (Graphical User Interface) began supporting third-party softwares and modems only ran at 14.4 kbps, most of the consumers were tech geeks. These tech geeks were mostly enamoured by the culture of Silicon Valley and took a deep interest in computer technology. It was a more or less elite group of consumers who took to the Internet, although many other members of the public were beginning to get computer training for specific programs such as MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) and D-Base (an early spreadsheet software).
With the greater integration of third-party softwares into the Windows GUI and an overall improvement in the GUI itself, culminating in Windows 95, droves of your average Joe got on the Internet. These average Joes would primarily be interested in communicating with others via email, browsing websites and participating in interest forums through UseNet and Internet Relay Chat. Most of these consumers were young, still in school or need the Internet in their line of work. Many retirees weren’t keen on the adoption of Web 1.0, and neither were many PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) who had access to line staff who could do computer work for them.
And of course the beginning of file sharing began in this era as well. While it wasn’t possible to download and upload huge discographies and high definition movie rips, but it was still possible to send over a few music clips and video clips here and there over email and Internet Relay Chat.
The main characteristic of Web 1.0 was the centralisation of content, be it informational content or entertaining content. Whomever had a mass of content that they would like to share would set up a website or a UseNet group or an Internet Relay Chat channel and share that content with others who would continually look to those individuals for similar content. Thus, you had websites such as Rodney and Cathy’s Joke List, which sent jokes to your email daily, Yall, which shared news about the Southern States of America and others.
Folks who already were well into Web 1.0 jumped onto Web 2.0 quite readily. And why not? With Web 2.0, consumers were able to share their own content with each other through social media sites like Multiply, photo sharing sites like Flickr, blog sites like Blogspot and video sharing platforms like YouTube, Dailymotion and the now defunct Stage6 Divx.
Web 2.0 still used the backbone of Web 1.0 but now, it decentralised content. Social media sites, photo sharing sites and video sharing sites were technically empty shells without user generated content. A large portion of this content was initially personal content. People would rant on their personal blogs. People would upload pictures of their kids on photo sharing sites. People would upload videos of their trips on video sharing sites. But soon, true content creators would emerge. These content creators created thematic content that would appeal to other consumers. They might create entertaining content like fail videos, or educational content such as ukulele tutorials.
We could thus say that in Web 2.0, consumers were content-creators and content-creators were consumers. In late Web 2.0, these platforms would come up with algorithms that would further change the face of user generated content. These algorithms would decide which content to promote to whom. This had several effects:
Now, what about Web3? Web3 is still unfolding. The space itself is still evolving despite what some other tech gurus might say. Metaverses are still not quite livable as virtual spaces. NFTs are coming up with newer and more comprehensive strategies to get people to jump onto their projects.
Early in Web3, the consumers were those who believed in decentralised finance. They saw decentralisation as a solution to the evils of centralisation. That was under the Layer 1 system where only coin tokens could be traded. On the Ethereum chain, these tokens were created using the ERC-20 standard. Ownership of these tokens were recorded on blockchains, which means that they were immutable. That is to say, no one can steal your coins from you. These people were initially a tad elite and a tad rebellious, and wanted to bring about a change to the financial world. You can still hear these undertones in their rallying cry “WAGMI” (we are all going to make it). Soon on the Ethereum chain, a Level 2 was built using the ERC-721 standard. This allowed for NFTs (non fungible tokens) to be bought, sold and transferred across the blockchain. Folks who were already sold on coins readily jumped onto the NFT space.
Now, recently though, this space is becoming increasingly available to a larger mass of more mainstream consumers who litter the Web 2.0 space. Web3 projects are increasingly making use to Web 2.0 technology to promote themselves. Major brands like Nike and Lacoste have created their own NFTs, with plans to expand to create metaverses too. NFT projects are not only using Discord and Twitter to promote their projects; they are now going onto more mainstream social media like Facebook to scour for interest there as well. Also, many platforms are making it easier to own NFTs without the need to have cryptocurrency. NFTs can now be bought on many platforms just with credit cards alone, such as Sandmilk and Sylvester Stallone’s own set of NFTs.
While Web 2.0 allowed for user generated content, Web3 now allows for purchase and ownership of such content. Furthermore, it is becoming more and more mainstream. Web3 is now being increasingly incorporated into Web 2.0 existing technologies, with the additional security of the blockchain.
So, are you going to jump onto the web3 train soon? With more upcoming developments in web3 integrating into Web 2.0, getting onto Web3 will be a cinch!
