Web 3.0 and Infomediary

Discussion on Web 3.0

Many point to a contest regarding the definition of Web 3.0 held in April 2007 by “ReadWriteWeb”, an internet media site where multiple bloggers convey new trends in web technology, as triggering this discussion. The contest was won by Robert O’Brien, a freelance engineer residing in New Zealand, who offered the following definition.

Personalization and Recommendation

In the Web 1.0 era, the information disseminated by certain portal companies and traditional media companies eventually occupied a commanding position within the internet. With Web 2.0, users who hitherto were merely information recipients were able to freely send, connect and share information, as epitomized by consumer generated media (CGM). This realized “collective intelligence”, where the accumulation of opinions from regular people makes it possible to make decisions more accurately than even some experts. And users’ word-of-mouth on the internet came to have a significant impact on purchasing behavior.

Information disseminated by traditional media such as newspapers and information disseminated by normal consumers existing in the same flat space that is the Internet is a dramatic shift that could indeed be called a “revolution”. The fact that information has become flat, however, means that a massive amount of information that cannot easily be organized by individuals is overflowing on the Internet. There is an increasing danger that the information necessary to individuals will be buried under a mountain.

When putting “me” at the forefront of the discussion regarding Web 3.0, the importance of organizing and systematizing huge amounts of information as “me”-specific is stressed. Advanced bloggers can use various technologies to systematize information by themselves and for themselves. For the large majority of users, however, systematizing a vast amount of unorganized information for personal use within a limited amount of time is no easy task. Services that can personalize the needed information and make recommendations for each individual consumer should become necessary. Here we find the assertion that “Web 3.0 is about personalization and recommendation”.

Infomediary in the Coming Age: Key Player behind the Scenes

Personalization and recommendation have already reached practical use in the field of B2C e-commerce. While Amazon.com’s “recommended for you” function has been famous for some time, older recommendation functions are costly, imprecise, and the effects are difficult to ascertain. However, with engines recently being provided in the Application Service Provider (ASP) format, costs have been reduced, accuracy has been enhanced with the refinement of algorithms and accumulation of data, and the effects are clearer with the increase of introduction examples. In addition to Amazon.com, various other internet shopping sites have introduced recommendation functions including a case where the conversion rate increased nearly three-fold with the launch of a recommendation engine.

The issue is who can personalize and recommend necessary information on behalf of the consumer. We are currently researching “infomediary” (information intermediary service) as an important theme, and believe that infomediaries will become central to personalization and recommendation. This is because the realization of accurate personalization and recommendation is dependent on gathering and analyzing vast amounts of data regarding the characteristics of the consumers as well as information on the subjects that will be recommended to these consumers. Infomediaries that can intermediate between information disseminators and receivers can compile such data. The real major player in the post-Web 2.0 age might be “me”, but the key player behind the scenes will be infomediaries.