LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman presented his vision today for a4AWeb 3.0a4 at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin.
Hoffman, who is now a partner at Greylock Partners, sounded dismissive of most of the buzzwords that have been tied to Web 3.0 &8212' bandwidth, a4Aappificationa4, video, location, real-time, and mobile. (He said mobile is probably the most significant trend of the bunch, but ita4a4s a4Akind of boringa4.) Instead, he said that the next big trend in the evolution of the Web, and the next big opportunity for entrepreneurs, is data.
Specifically, he said that if Web 1.0 involved a4Ago search, get dataa4 and some limited interactivity' and if Web 2.0 involves a4Areal identitiesa4 and a4Areal relationshipsa4, then Web 3.0 will be a4Areal identities generating massive amounts of data.a4
Of course, there are risks associated with you sharing data tied to your personal identity. (Two of the conferencea4a4s keynote speakers, 4chan founder Christopher Poole and Web video star Felicia Day, both made arguments for the benefits of anonymity.) But Hoffman said startups should just follow two important rules about data. First, a4Anever ambush your users.a4 Second, a4Anot all data is created equal.a4 A lot of the data that people provide online isna4a4t harmful, he said &8212' what companies and users need to be really careful about is a4Adata that is essentially equivalent to a password,&'' which includes things like credit card numbers.
Hoffman offered several examples of companies that are already doing interesting and useful things with social data: LinkedIn offers a new feature called Skills, where users can find people, companies, and jobs related to each skill. Therea4a4s Waze, a mobile application that uses data about your location and speed during your commute to deliver traffic advice. And therea4a4s Redfin, an online real estate broker (which Greylock invested in) that gives homebuyers more information about their prospective homes and the housing market.
In what Hoffman acknowledged was a rather self-referential move, he proposed collecting social data about the interesting apps that can be built with social data &8212' audience members are supposed to post their ideas on Twitter with the hashtag web3, and his team will try to create an infographic showing off the ideas.
In addition to talking about data, Hoffman also offered what he called his 10 rules of entrepreneurship.
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Companies: linkedin
People: Reid Hoffman
Companies: linkedin
People: Reid Hoffman
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
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