It is funny. As I get ready to do a write up on a great event this week I find that there is an online “blog fight” about Web 3.0 vs 2010 Web vs whatever. This past Monday was a great event called SocStardom #3 hosted by Maya Ruiz-McPherson that hosted Jay Berkowitz of “Ten Golden Rules of Marketing” fame. He is CEO of TenGoldenRules.com and gave us a preview of his presentation called “Web 2010″.

As I was writing this yesterday I was reviewing my blog feed and saw Chris Brogan’s post “Please Write this Robert” which talked about Robert Scoble’s post about Web 2010. What I didn’t realize until I read Scoble’s post was that he was commenting on the All Things D Conference held last week by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. It was there that they were trying to capitalize on marking their conference as the start of the Web 3.0 era. Scoble called them out on this and addressed this by remarking that this type of innovation comes in at different times and that using a 2.0 or 3.0 really hurt the innovation process. Kara Swisher didn’t take too kindly to this in her response and so a blog fight has ensued.

What was sad is that they missed an opportunity to see Jay Berkowitz give his Web 2010 presentation which was not planned but coincidentally timed to these blog posts by Robert and Kara. The bigger point is that we are stepping into the next era of the web and 2010 is next year so this title is appropriate and forward thinking without getting too futurist on everyone.

In his talk last night, Jay pointed out 10 areas that are going to comprise our world and trends next year. Here are the highlights:

Area #1.) Micro-communications – Short communications for a short attention span. We will take our news in small bits using tools like Twitter, Qik, 12Seconds. Interesting case of @missionpie – they use Twitter and posts the pies they have this today and business is up 20% a day.

Area #2.) Virtualization – Businesses and segments going virutal. Virtual Assistants, Virtual Employees and Virtual Meetings. Tools – Guru, GoToMeeting, MyBusinessAssistant

Area #3.) Free Stuff! - Amazing free produrts with a revenue model attached. Wordpress, Podcasts, SEO Quake Toolbar, Google Analytics, Compete, Spyfu

Area #4.) Social Search – Crowsourcing opinions and interacting with community. Tools like Twitter Search are instantaneous and is faster than Google. Angie’s List, BazaarVoice and Threadless.

Area #5.) Customer Service ansd the New Marketing Department – Monitor your branding social media and develop a dialogue with your customers and prospects. Tools like Radian6 and CoTweet are extremely effective.

Area #6.) Disintermdediation Part 2 – Take advantage of “news hole” and engage directly. Tools like HelpAReporterOut are taking out the middleman.

Area #7.)  Super Widgetization – Develop applications to go direct to desktop. Facebook apps, iPhone apps, WeFollow, Twitter Apps, Widgets (widgetbox, clearspring)

Area #8.) Video! - Videos build viral traffic and conversion – Youtube, HowToVideos, Name and Tag videos with key words. Use Tubemogul, Great Thumbnails

Area #9) Personal Brand (PeoplePool, Google Profiles) – Create a unique brand and own it

a.) Be Your own Brand Manager (develop your brand marketing plan, how are you going to promote, set specific measurable goals)

b.) Determine your USP (what makes you distinctive, how can you enhance your unique skills)

c.) Follow Your Passion (where do you like to hangout, what do you

d.) Listen

e.) Embrace Your Inner Author (Create Unique Content)

f.) Build Your New (Set a goal to make a few quality connections, give to get ask about them, Ask about them)

g.) Volunteer to Shine (Develop new skills, enhance skill through freelance opportunities)

h.) Innovate to Lead

i.) Be Entrepreneurial – Entrepreneur is a verb

j.) Speak Up! – Go to Toastmasters, Presentation Zen

Area #10.) The Semantic Web – Evolving extension of the web and not just just an interconnectivity but an understanding of data. For more on this area I would review the Wikipedia explanation and Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web) seminal article on Semantic Web in Scientific America.

For more great nuggests of trends and marketing goodness, check out presentations by Jay at his site at http://Presentations.TenGoldenRules.com

Over the past 48 hours, the Internet world has been abuzz over Microsoft’s recent announcement that it was evolving the way search was happening. As a result, Live Search is no longer a player in the game. Enter Bing – the “decision engine”. Set to be formally unveiled on June 1, I have been privvy to a private screening by the folks at Microsoft courtesy of SHIFT Communications and based on what I’m seeing thus far, I’m thinking it’ll create a whole new environment on which search is based. But no…I do not think it will be the proverbial “Google killer”. It just opens a new way of thinking about how search is done.

During the webcast with the head of Microsoft’s search team, Stefan Weitz, he basically laid out the case for Bing. Apparently what search engines are dealing with is a lot of noise. People are searching for information and look for search engines to provide them an aggregate list of websites and resources. However, the tough part is separating all those links on the page – which ones are the good links and which are the bad ones? In the case with Bing, the goal is to propose more good links and help eliminate dead links. So if you’re looking for information on the cause of diabetes, for example, Bing would give you links for Mayo Clinic or the CDC or other more relevant websites rather than a pharmacy website that could be considered a “fly by night”. How is this done without doing a profile on you? Through Microsoft’s algorithms, it seems.

Microsoft has done some research into what they’ve created with their search engine and in order to make something that will stand out and become one of the leading search engines and position themselves as understanding the semantic web, this is what they’ve uncovered:

- Users are dissatisfied: Search results for 50 percent of the queries fail to meet the consumer’s needs (they are either abandoned or refined), and 35 percent of people express dissatisfaction with search today — and this percentage increases when they move into task-focused activities (such as getting local information or finding a product).

- Users want help searching: 72 percent of people surveyed said current search results are too disorganized, nearly half of all search queries are a repeat of a previous search, and half the searches are eventually refined.

- Users are focused more on tasks and decisions: 66 percent of people reported using search engines to make decisions, and long sessions are becoming more common, with more than 46 percent of searchers’ time being spent on sessions more than 30 minutes in length.

These startling statistics has led Microsoft to look at how to make search engines help form decisions for the users. And it seems that they have done just that, but unfortunately for businesses who wish to advertise on this new robust search engine, they’ll need to make their content and information that much more relevant. So brush up on your search engine optimization skills because you’re going to need it!

Based on my conversation with the Microsoft team earlier today, here are some additional tidbits on Bing:

From the standpoint of the end user, you’re allowed to do whatever search queries you want to do but also that you’re able to focus on three other vertical markets: local, travel and shopping. When you query something, keep in mind that you’re no longer subject to everything relating to that query being thrust at you in the very beginning. You can filter our the criteria. So if there are alternative forms of the search query, Microsoft Bing will provide that for you. If you’re looking for electronics to purchase, you’re able to get a shopping price list so you’ll know where the cheapest place is along with any reviews scoured across multiple websites – the same goes for restaurants if you care to dine out. The most interesting thing is that if you wish to travel, you’re going to encounter an interface very similiar to Kayak.com, but you’re still on the Bing website. You simply enter in your travel criteria and you’ll get a list of websites that show the lowest prices (Microsoft doesn’t get any money from any sale or ticket purchased, from what I’m told). However, what separates Kayak.com from Bing’s Travel option is the incorporation of Farecast, which Microsoft purchased recently that gives travel fare trends so you’ll know over the course of 7 days the odds of whether the fare will increase or decrease if you don’t buy right now.

A new feature that I think may have some use is their new “Save & Share” search feature. You can look back from a historical perspective at all of the search queries you’ve selected AND also the links that you’ve clicked and save them for others to look at or even share them with others by posting to Windows Live, emailing it, or using Facebook Connect to post to your Facebook page. But where’s Twitter or FriendFeed in the mix? There’s currently no plan right now to integrate them. Why? Perhaps because Microsoft doesn’t own a stake in any of those companies? I don’t know the answer, but it should be a good point to have them added to help spread the word.

So what does this do for businesses who think it’s another website? Well first of all it will possibly screw with your search engine strategy a bit, but most likely for the better. Yes, you can go through the motions and try and optimize your website, but this will also help people perfect their search engine marketing skills. Moreover, with Microsoft’s attempt at making this a relevant search for users, chances are that you’ll find that those engaging in covert SEO black hat ops will be found out through the search algorithms and therefore not appear high in the rankings since Microsoft does it through relevancy. Sure, you may still encounter them as you filter your search but the probabilities of having dead links will be low.

As for text advertising like you would see on Google or Yahoo, they still remain. Here’s something interesting though. If you are advertising a travel product, there may be a chance that you’ll have the benefit of appearing in the travel portion of Bing where people look for travel arrangements AND also if they conducted a regular travel search query. So two for the price of one, perhaps? Who knows…but rest assured that your ads will be seen. You just need to make sure that your content on that text ad and website is also relevant so work on that copy and spruce up that website!

If there’s one thing to say about Bing, it’s relevancy. Everything is ordered in a way that is easily accessible in this search engine “portal”. If you conduct the same search in Yahoo, Google, and Bing, you’ll see how things are organized. With Google, news relating to said subject would appear first and immediately you’re thrust into the search results. But with Bing, you’re going to see that the searches are pretty demarcated and you can filter your search from things like images, news, references, video, etc. The point of Bing is to make it so you don’t need to leave their site to play music, watch videos, etc that you might find off of the website, thereby reducing the number of clicks you encounter. You’re able to zoom past any irrelevant sites and go straight to where you’re most interested.

Ingenious? I’d say it’s getting pretty close to as relevant of information as I’d want. They’re set to go live globally fully on June 3, but you’re able to start using it on June 1 for some portions of search. Check out their product guide and also their tutorial video to get a glimpse at what awaits the world on Bing. Maybe now search makes some sense.

*All trademarks, service marks and logos (the “Trademarks”) used are registered and unregistered Trademarks of their respective owners.

We all refer to Web 2.0 and have a sense for what that means to us. But many are starting to consider Web 3.0. Our own Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy will be speaking at the upcoming Web 3.0 Conference in mid October in Santa Clara, California. He will be on a panel discussing Knowledge Discovery from Semantic Metadata.

The focus of the conference is: “Web 3.0 Conference is for the builders of the next generation web: designers, developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, business strategists, and venture capitalists, people who have experiences to share and a passion for learning the “hot new thing”, lessons from failures, innovations and inspirations, and the practical applications of all of the above. What are the ways we can create more value for our businesses? How can we provide a more meaningful experience for users and customers? How can we have a positive impact on the world we live in? What tools and applications are right for a given project? How do we gather and focus data points to deliver relevant information? How can we increase conversation and collaboration?”

Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy is the Chief Knowledge Officer and VP of Analytics at Network Solutions. Prior to this he co-founded and RKR Group, Inc. a strategy, business and technology consulting firm. Prior to RKR Group, Dr. Priyadarshy was a Senior Research Scientist at AOL. Dr. Priyadarshy has extensive experience in web data mining and consumer experience metrics. He has authored over 30 papers in various scientific areas and given invited talks on technology topics including social networking, semantic web etc. Dr. Priyadarshy also teaches Managing Information Systems in Global Environment course at the School of Management, George Mason University.

If you’re interested in attending the conference you can use customer code ‘SPKGF08′ to save $100 on a full-conference pass or sign up for a Free Special Events Pass giving you access to the exhibit area & admission to the Keynotes. The conference is Oct 16-17, 2008 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Santa Clara, California.