How to Dominate in Web 3.0
Can you imagine an internet where you are no longer being spied upon, and your information is not being sold without your permission? Unfortunately, this hasn’t been the case with social media giants like Google and Facebook. It’s been 17 years where Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft gather data from the user and centralize it in their databases. They sell it to 3rd party advertisers who advertise products to the consumer.
The History of the Internet
Let’s go back in time to explain the history of the internet. Web 1.0 was the beginning of the World Wide Web evolution. It is a period from the early 90s to around 2004 where websites were simply static web pages and only had read-only service. That was consumer-generated content.
Then in 2004 came social media. The user browses content on the social media site, and the social media site stores the information about the user in their database. Take Facebook, for example; before users browse content on their site, they have to input their information. Because they get to use Facebook’s site for “free,” in turn, Facebook sells that information to advertisers who pay to run targeted ads towards the user on Facebook. That’s Web 2.0.
After nearly two decades, people are looking for an internet that’s decentralized so that they can control their data. That’s Web 3.0 for you.
Welcome to Web 3.0
It’s supposed to be a reimagination of how things get done. Information that we want to be public is published. The information we want private is kept secret and never revealed. The information we agreed upon gets placed on a consensus ledger. No government or organization owns and controls our data.
How to Prepare for This
Web 3.0 is here, but it’s still in its beginning stages. So here are some ways to ensure your website’s success in this new age of the internet:
1) Make sure your website is AI-Driven
You’re going to want to know and be familiar with these terms: AI and machine learning. As a business, you have to create a smoother and frictionless web design that makes the user experience like sailing in the wind. You have to access data quickly, such as the user’s age, gender, location, and many others.
2) Optimize the website for Semantic Web
For Web 3.0, it will be essential to conduct a contextual search for answers or services. And you should optimize your website with intelligent voice search features. Let’s take this example, if you were to type the word “apple” on the search engine, we get results related to Apple, the company, but an apple is also a fruit. A semantically optimized website can discern the difference in the context of the words and provide the user with relevant results. Also, let’s take these two sentence examples “I love peaches” and “I <3 peaches.” They have different syntaxes, but they mean the same thing.
As technology progresses, users want a website to understand what they mean when they type something rather than specify what they mean. That’s where having Big Data is essential to target users to the utmost precision. Having an AI-based data analytics feature allows you, as the site owner, to focus on necessary and specific data from end-users and understand the context of their searches.
3) Design your website to be ubiquitous
Ubiquity is the ability to be everywhere and at the same time. Business owners and site owners must be omnipresent with potential customers. In Web 2.0, users can retweet or share a post or image as long as they are on a social media platform. In Web 3.0, there will be new types of intelligent devices and IoT (Internet of Things) besides smartphones and computers, so it’s best to make it accessible to every person and every device. These include smartwatches, smart glasses, or AI-driven devices like Alexa, but they usually come with limited processing power.
In Web 3.0, the user interface (UI) needs to be optimized perfectly. Also, it’s essential to take the security aspect very seriously due to the device’s limited processing power. As the site owner, you must take every measure necessary to ensure the website doesn’t threaten the user’s data security.
4) Set up Virtual Reality (Having a Metaverse?)
A business must improve the transparency and quality of AR/VR technology on its website to take the user experience (UX) to the next level. This change will allow the customer to experience the product or service before making their purchase; thus, they can make better decisions. Increasing the transparency of the user experience will enable them to make better and more informed decisions. We can’t stress this fact enough since a lousy customer experience, and poor customer retention can lead to the downfall of any business!
5) Install crypto and NFTs on there
Another way you can get ahead of the curve is by incorporating decentralized finance, also known as De-Fi, into your website. Although this has not yet received mass adoption, cryptocurrency made headlines in 2021 due to major players and companies tweeting about it. When Tesla Elon Musk tweeted that he would accept Bitcoin as payment, it drove Bitcoin into a frenzy, and its price shot up coincidently. However, Tesla discontinued it because of environmental issues associated with mining it. Some major retailers accept it as payment, such as Microsoft, Whole Foods, Starbucks, and Home Depot. More and more companies allow customers to purchase products with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
Also, there’s been an NFT craze recently. NFTs stand for Non-fungible Tokens and are digital assets that represent unique ownership of items like art, collectibles, or even real estate. It’s nearly impossible to modify the record of ownership by copying & pasting a new NFT into existence, and its uses are immense.
Let’s say you were to buy an Adidas Superstar shoe from Adidas; the store might give you the buyer a special NFT of the shoe which you can put as your avatar when you play Roblox. Or you could buy the digital twin of the product, which gives you ownership of the physical shoe as part of the deal.
Say young Timmy is playing this new game called Axie Infinity. He buys cute digital pets from the game called Axies, and he battles other players’ Axies. If he wins, he earns tokens to breed the Axie to create new ones, and he could sell the Axie on a marketplace. Or he could take the tokens he earned from the game outside to open a marketplace where he can convert crypto into traditional currency. Also, there are a ton of celebrities and large companies jumping into the craze, so why not take advantage of it?
This is a Good Idea, Maybe… / Any Doubts?
With AI/ML incorporated into this project, who wouldn’t be excited about the new internet? It’s supposed to be fairer, you as the user have more control over your information, and you get the metaverse - a pleasant, transparent digital experience. Who wouldn’t want to be part of it? Even with all those promises and innovation, it doesn’t come without skepticism.
For example, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated: “‘You don’t own ‘web3.’ The venture capitalists and their limited partnerships do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralized entity with a different label.’” If you think he’s biased because he ran a web 2.0 social media company, here’s what Elon Musk said: “I’m not suggesting web3 is real, seems more like a marketing buzzword than reality right now….” Later, Musk humorously tweeted: “Has anyone seen web3? I can’t find it.”
What is it going to take?
While there’s a lot of hype surrounding this new internet phenomenon, and its intentions are supposed to be benevolent, it must execute its goals and have the infrastructure to make it happen. Otherwise, Web 3.0 will be another Web 2.0 that’s just AI-improved and a metaverse, and users still can’t control their privacy. Skepticism is necessary to improve innovations and make them work for most people. It will require contributions from different companies, multiple computer/blockchain programmers, and ultimately a large community of people to make it a reality. It’s paramount that continuous improvements ensure a fairer and better internet.
