Now that we have all become aware of ‘social media’ and we have discovered an alternative meaning for the word ‘tweet’ since the arrival of Twitter in our lives, the latest round of jargon in the internet world is now building. Start getting used to ‘Web 3.0’ because it is the next big thing. But what is it? The web we know enable us to contribute to the web through our blogs, wikis and Facebook pages, for example (or a read-write world) and we search for relevant information by entering words into a search engines. But the results you get are often not relevant so you can spend a long time looking for what you need.

Web 3.0 will enable us to search more effectively by finding connected, related information so that we get results based upon meaning rather than just words that happen to be on a web page. In the near future, all effective web sites will need to be ready for web 3.0 search engines which use a specification called ‘RDF’ (resource description framework) to find relevance and meaning on a web page.

Another hot topic in the publishing industry as it comes to terms with digital technology is the question ‘Will people pay for content online?’ The perception is that people will not pay for content online but this is not necessarily the case as some publishers are proving.

Our New Business Director was on our local BBC Radio talking with William Wright about these topics recently. You can listen to the discussion on the recording below.