The sweet spot of Web 3.0 (or any other Web.vNext moniker) is all about providing Web Users with a structured and interlinked data substrate that facilitates serendipitous discovery of relevant "Things" i.e., a Linked Data Web -- a Web of Linkable Entities that goes beyond documents and other information resource (data containers) types.

Understanding potential Linked Data Web business models, relative to other Web based market segments, is best pursued via a BCG Matrix diagram, such as the one I've constructed below:



Notes:

Link Density

  • Web 1.0's collection of "Web Sites" have relatively low link density relative to Web 2.0's user-activity driven generation of semi-structured linked data spaces (e.g., Blogs, Wikis, Shared Bookmarks, RSS/Atom Feeds, Photo Galleries, Discussion Forums etc..)
  • Semantic Technologies (i.e. "Semantics Inside style solutions") which are primarily about "Semantic Meaning" culled from Web 1.0 Pages also have limited linked density relative to Web 2.0
  • The Linked Data Web, courtesy of the open-ended linking capacity of URIs, matches and ultimately exceeds Web 2.0 link density.

Relevance

  • Web 1.0 and 2.0 are low relevance realms driven by hyperlinks to information resources ((X)HTML, RSS, Atom, OPML, XML, Images, Audio files etc.) associated with Literal Labels and Tagging schemes devoid of explicit property based resource description thereby making the pursuit of relevance mercurial at best
  • Semantic Technologies offer more relevance than Web 1.0 and 2.0 based on the increased context that semantic analysis of Web pages accords
  • The Linked Data Web, courtesy of URIs that expose self-describing data entities, match the relevance levels attained by Semantic Technologies.

Serendipity Quotient (SDQ)

  • Web 1.0 has next to no serendipity, the closest thing is Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
  • Web 2.0 possess higher potential for serendipitous discovery than Web 1.0, but such potential is neutralized by inherent subjectivity due to its human-interaction-focused literal foundation (e.g., tags, voting schemes, wiki editors etc.)
  • Semantic Technologies produce islands-of-relevance with little scope for serendipitous discovery due to URI invisibility, since the prime focus is delivering more context to Web search relative to traditional Web 1.0 search engines.
  • The Linked Data Web's use of URIs as the naming and resolution mechanism for exposing structured and interlinked resources provides the highest potential for serendipitous discovery of relevant "Things"

To conclude, the Linked Data Web's market opportunities are all about the evolution of the Web into a powerful substrate that offers a unique intersection of "Link Density" and "Relevance", exploitable across horizontal and vertical market segments to solutions providers. Put differently, SDQ is how you take "The Ad" out of "Advertising" when matching Web users to relevant things :-)