SXSW Panel: Web 2.0 to Web 3D [part 1]

[...] Wu has a nice post up on a panel she participated in at the SXSW conference recently called “Web 2.0 to Web [...]

I believe that we’ll see two divergent, though interoperable paths for the consumer web. The 3D internet will exist and thrive, but the key to it’s success is interoperability with the 2D net.

There is no doubt that the majority of people, especially for the next four to five years, simply aren’t ready for a 3D internet. Frankly, the hardware required for a great experience probably isn’t even designed yet. Bandwidth is just now adequate… I just tested with 10Mbps down from Comcast.

The early adopters of 3D environments are paving the way for commercial adoption, and subsequently consumer adoption. You said it succinctly: “The mad rush by these big brands to create empty showrooms in SecondLife is proof of this.” Very well said, but don’t lose sight of the fact that all that needs to happen to blast people into those showrooms is the brands fully embracing them. Imagine if Sears, after their regular TV ad, mentioned that you could shop in 3D and save 5% for a limited time if you shopped in the Second Life store? People. Lots of them.

It is also very important to remember that if you put the “3D internet” into the context of the web in 1993/4 the similarities are striking. I would be just as shocked and delighted to see a SLURL on TV today as I was to see a URL back in the day. What worked for web developers and new media marketing then will likely work today.

Let’s see.

Very good conversation here. Susan I would say you are probably right in your timeframe projections on mass adoption/implementation. The barrier to entry is still way to high for most people. Virtual Worlds can discourage even hardcore nerds at times due to their non-intuitive platform specific rules.

I think we will see scenarios liek Mr. Zeluco mentions whereby companies will try to drive peopel to their SL or other virtual world presence if it enhances teh buying experience not just offers some nifty “bells and whistles”. My biggest disappointment in SL shopping is lack of avatar sales people(in most places). Leaving shopping to high-tech and sterile. I hate wasting time in large expansive stores trying to find what I want while it slowly “rezzes”, and would like to know immediately what is available.

Even in RL “big box” stores service is available(won’t discuss quality issues here) if you seek it.

I had this fantastic vision when I first joined Second Life last year of a time clock that would allow shop owners to hire people to mind their stores. I don’t need to go in to the specifics other than to say that I was thinking along those same lines. My need was a hat. I simply wanted to buy a hat and there were no employees to be found in any of the stores I stumbled upon (no great directories either). Ultimately I found a hat (and haven’t worn it since) purely by happenstance.

There are so many opportunities for improvement in 3D world methodologies that it really boggles my mind. If the pioneers take the arrows, look for lots of bodies over Susan’s 2 to 4 years. The glory will come in half a decade.

I would also argue that the metrics for success in a 3D world are still unknown. It might just be that the same tactics that helped us figure them out in the 2D net (lots of people) will work to help us figure them out in 3D as well. So churn and conversion rates might suck at first, but they will in a short period of time (relatively) get sorted out.

To me one of the greatest ironies of my SL experience is how poorly information is organized considering the technology behind creating the platform. It seems that search functions are purely an after thought in the SL matrix. I kind of relate to SL as the “world of 1,000 islands” where they all exist under the same sun but have a very tenuous link at best.

I think this is why companies liek ESC… have such a good opportunity-going and providing products/services that the LL folks let slip through the cracks.

That being said I still feel its a very impressive sandbox the Linden’s have provided, now they just need to strain out some detritus.

Hi Susan - good to meet you at SxSW! I still think that the missing part of this discourse is to think intelligently about the wonderfully-rendered 4D environment around us and how that interacts with technology, entertainment, media, communications.

Paul Dourish’s book “Where the action is” and Malcolm McCullough’s book “Digital Ground” make this point academically, and of course Guitar Hero, and the Wii commercially prove the place for embodied interaction with digital stuff in the ‘half-real’ world.

Which also reminds me of ANOTHER book - “Half-Real” by Jesper Juul which looks at how game worlds ‘compile’ in people’s perceptions, and the book I mentioned to you at the Salt Lick “Rules of Play” by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.

Anyway - enough books! Great to meet you and just wanted to state my belief that the Web3.0 Immersion you describe might not be 3D on screen but nD in the world: 4 dimensions from the physical world blended with n dimensions of information from the digital cloud.

An interesting thread.

I certanly agree with the view that the development and adoption of 3D environments is closely mirroring the adoption of the http://WWW.

Something which is striking me from this discussion is that whilst Web 3D can be seen as the next step in web evolution, following Susan’s curve of

Web 1.0 Information Sharing
Web 2.0 Interaction
Web 3.0 Immersion

Web 3.0 = 3D is not necessarily built upon the facilities and function of Web 2.0. It is a completely new paradigm.

So, environments such as Second Life are big on 3D functionality, but do not really have any of the features of Web 2.0 inbuilt. The developers are still getting to grips with the wonders of managing avatars, simulating physics and gravity, getting voice working etc. Given time, I’m sure that the APIs and other interfaces will be in place to provide Web 2.0 functionality within a 3D environment. In fact, with SL, good old Web 1.0 functionality isn’t really there yet!

As has been stated, environments such as Second Life are currently a sandbox for evaluating the best ways to exploit 3D. If you look at the work that is being done in SL you will find some experiments which work really well (IBM’s SOA Building as a sort of “permanent trade show”; PA’s prototype banking hall etc.) and some which are pretty flat and boring, and could really be done better as a simple web page (e.g. IBM’s SEARS building).

We are already finding that, for example, a 3D space works best if there is someone there to interact with, compared with a sterile, empty building full of static displays. Hence organisations are employing “greeters” on a 24×7 basis to add value to their buildings. As the use of the 3D space matures, so we will discover other changes needed to the way we work, and find new innovations and, perhaps, the illusive “killer app”.

Given the way that SL engenders communication, chat and interaction, it will be interesting to see what happens when some of the Web 2.0 social networking tools are implemented within the 3D space.

[...] any of the great ideas tossed around at panels as there are plenty of folks (often including the panelists themselves) doing so already, but I do just have to say that the Will Wright keynote was just outstanding, and [...]

Mascot, the 3D web is not mirroring the adoption of the www, at least in terms of consumers.

As for companies, I remember 10 years ago visiting SGI and talking about building models of all stadiums and concert venues so people could get a feel for what the stage would look like while they browsed for tickets. Shortly after that, I sat in a hotel room in San Jose working on a 3D model of one of IBM’s largest websites, right after the second? Internet World. Then there was all of the early fun exploring and building in Worlds Inc.

What’s frustrating is that from 6 feet away, SL is not much different that WorldsInc. Remember Oz Interactive? So many cottage shops trying to bring 3D to the net and people like Mark Pesce touting VRML to anyone who would listen. I listed to Valerie Williamson of Electric Sheep speak at MIT last week. She is biz dev, so she has to pimp the company, but it all rang slightly hollow, and I want nothing more than ESC and the other worldbuilders to succeed.

Sigh, this was all 10 years ago. The 3D net continues to evolve, albeit sloooowly. I take reporters on tours of SL often. I get a lot of “that’s it?” If it weren’t for the media hype, nobody would be there except the hard-core early adopters.

As for interoperability, we need a new version of something like VRML so people can teleport from Virtual Laguna Beach to SL to There.com and so forth. This is not happening, as there is too much money to be made and lock-in is a feature.

SL is on the right track providing users with rudimentary tools and releasing the code to the client, but even so, SL is a pretty quiet place compared to WOW. Someone is going to bring WOW level of engagement to SL and it will take off.

ESC and Rivers Run Red and all the other worldbuilders are making all their coin off the large corporations. That’s business, but I can’t wait for the scrappy game developement shop to say the heck with EA and the other game publishers, I’m going into SL or Metaverse and staking my claim there instead of on the console.

Sony Home seems to be the one to watch, they have the people, horsepower, content and network to beat. Nobody knows who’s going to win big but it sure is fun to watch.

David
It was interesting to read your comment on my comment…..
VRML….. gosh, yes, It’s ages since I heard of it.
I certainly agree that there’s a need for an interoperable 3D standard. I share your view that it should be possible to hop transparently from one “world” to another.
In terms of uptake, I agree that SL is sparsely populated compared with WoW, but it is accelerating. And with the numbers of companies dabbling with islands in SL, there will be more content to attract the punters… it is just a question of how quickly it all catches on. However, I think the technology refresh cycle for PCs will have large part to play, as SL is only really viable with a decent quality graphics card…. though as you say, this all may be blown out of the water when Sony Home comes online.

Team, I remain skeptical that technology refresh will affect adoption rates for the next several years. That has been the case for a decade. Giving away virtual cars and gadgets to people will not draw them in. The lack of things to do in SL leaves people to explore, where in Wow has more structure, community and goals.

Exploring is fine for some, most just want to play a game. Look at content creation on YouTube. Single-digit number of creators, everyone else is consuming the experience. If that plays out in SL, it’s going to remain an exploratory landscape for quite some time.

@David, the internet was born in the 60’s was it not? It took until 1994 for the public and subsequently the masses to adopt it. So 3D worlds have been around for a couple of decades… we are beginning to see consumer adoption.

As for ESC, were you able to attend the Dean Koontz book reading last week at Bantam’s book store on Sheep Island? I was there. The island was packed, as were 9 other venues, with users wanting to hear Dean read from his newest book. The most telling fact at the event (I’ve never read a Koontz book btw, but I was there) was how many of the avatars were uncustomized. People were signing up for SL just for that event.

I mentioned earlier in this thread that real world companies weren’t going to do much in SL until they cross the real/virtual world divide. Enter HR Block. They (with the help of ESC of course) have launched an island in support of their coming Tango product. They’re offering tax consulting as well, in-world. The kicker? You can buy a T-Shirt *and* a license to Tango (a www service) for L$100. To the real world, that is about 37 cents.

Be careful not to let the early days of 3D affect your view of today’s virtual worlds. I remember all the hype, as covered by truly remarkable magazines like Mondo 2000, even before Wired and the mass consumer mags. The key difference is that the virtual worlds back in the day had hundreds of users… today there are millions.

As far as Sony Home goes, they’ll have moderate success. Their audience is limited by the number of people that buy the PS3 (or other Sony branded devices) that actually want to participate in Home. There is no user generated content, and license fees will play a large part in commercial adoption. Good luck with that Sony.

And, if I may follow up, every demo I’ve ever given of SL leave people wanting more. They’re curious, and when there are usable services in-world, they’ll participate. Remember web .5? Early adopters. Web 1.0 brought us Yahoo! and Monster.com… who will those be in SL?

I’m not sure I made this clear, but I believe that Linden Labs will play a bit part in shaping what will be a free and open 3D internet. They alone will not control it, the users won’t allow it, for long. Have a look at http://openmetaverse.org/ It is powered by ESC, and CBS’s $7 million investment.

The other aspect to consider in SL is that businesses and educators are seeing a benefit, not as an advertising medium, but as a collaborative meeting space.

I was listening to Daniel Reed, (Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) give a talk in SL on Computing the Future: The 3-D Net at the New Media Consortium. (mp3 available at http://www.nmc.org/sl/docs/reed-3d-net.pdf) In this presentation, he observes that remove collaborative working is made easier / better when an environment such as SL is used for meetings - there is something about the immersive experience that adds value to the interaction…. Indeed, I have discussed this myself at http://slmascot.blogspot.com/2007/01/immersive-experience.html

The bottom-line here is that the “killer app” of 3D has yet to be found. Imoroved communcation/ collaboration may be on the list… but as usual with evolving new technologies, something is likely to come from left field and take us all by surprise.

I think what you are trying to imply is presence when you say immersion in your post.

I am sure you would agree that it has been in text based MUD, voice based, 2D graphics or 3D virtual reality kind of situations. It is only that each of these have different cost ( to our brain) equations. A moving picture or a game takes the least effort for us to form an imagery in our heard that we seem to like it the most.

A elaborately detailed handling of the subject is in a seminal paper by Douglas Galbi.

http://www.galbithink.org/lessmore.htm

Rajan

Of course the early days of the 3D net affect my view of today’s virtual worlds. How could they not?

People, at least on a large scale, are not ready for immersive environments, society has to catch up. I’m not talking about videogames, I’m talking about performing life’s day to day functions in a 3D environment.

SL is slow, buggy and crashes often. Until this is rectified, it’s going to remain a large niche. People will not pay for something that breaks every few days. Especially when the problem is called “greg goo.”

HR Block making tax preparation in SL “more fun and engaging?” Total gimmick.

I’m all for corporations sponsoring the growth of SL, and there is a reason the company is called Electric Sheep, corporations follow them allright.

You assume Sony won’t let PC’s connect to Home. I hope that is not the case.

This blog really needs a subscribe to comments link for individual posts.

OK, a lot of good points from everyone - and yes there are a dozen or more things that are happening in parallel, each that has to succeed for this to really make this viable.

What I see as the biggest risk is people who have forgotton how to fantasize and imagine - whether its stress, time pressure, the hardness of todays world, etc. When I show SL, there are the people who get it and the people who want to shut me up and run screaming from the room. It’s the latter whom I know can’t bring themselves to transfer their psyche into an avatar and let it really become the virtual representation of themselves.

No, I go back to the original word, “Immersion”. Until you can let the avatar become yourself, allow it to represent you and you truly develop a comfort level with it, 3D doesn’t provide anything over 2D. It’s going to take ‘The SIMS’ generation with ‘Vista Ready’ class computers (or Leopard, of course) to make this happen.

Hi everyone

Moving from Web 2.0 world to 3D environments will give us new dimension which in turn brings expectation of presence and interaction. When I browse the web I don’t mind not experiencing the other browsers. Consider the situation with three dimensional environments. Empty corridors are spooky especially if you know you are hopping inside popular sites. This analogy will bring interesting problems on traffic hour when places get really crowded.

Messing around in three dimensional environments certainly gives you a lot of new things to do but the old problem of good user interfaces remain as you want to use some tool more complex than a lever. One would expect that we don’t ditch the good old solutions like Web 2.0 pages on this instance but rather wrap the old pages on surfaces. Closer look to the interface just pops it in your personal HUD as a semi transparent window.

The bloom of the 3d web is still behind a barrier. The analogy for HTML exists in VRML and X3D but the problem is that the 3D environment has brought new requirements which are not yet incorporated in the standards. For example the ongoing discussion between browser and server about avatar locations, appearances and emotes are blank points. The protocol extensions do not need nor should be complex. Players just need to agree on it and write it down.

web3D is coming, and we can’t even handle web2.0

[...] people to interact with each other in casual immersive worlds over the next few years. Susan Wu thinks so too, and her prediction about web 3.0 (are we there already?) is that it will be: continuing down [...]

[...] SXSW Panel: Web 2.0 to Web 3D [part 1] « Susan Wu - Venture Capital __________________ ……………… [...]

I think that we are at the verge of the second 3D Virtual Worlds boom. I’ve witnessed the first. 3D Virtual Worlds are not a new idea or phenomenon. They existed (but not thrived) in the Web 1.0 era. Furthermore, text based virtual worlds (MUDs) existed from the early beginnings.

I think that only a few things have changed recently:
1. Companies moved away from subscription based services. Instead, most current generation services are free for the end user while generating income from ads, sponsorships, item sales, and virtual money economies.
2. Adoption rates are somewhat higher, as Internet users become more mature and tech/game savvy.
3. The basic underlying 3D, networking and server technologies have remained mostly the unchanged, but computers have become faster and available bandwidth has grown and become cheaper.

Over the past 10-12 years I’ve seen numerous companies try to create 3D Virtual Environments such as chat rooms, shops, malls and hangouts (I’m not talking about games since they have a somewhat different model and target audience). Most of them failed to capitalize or to become popular. Many didn’t even manage to get off the ground but some relics of that era can still be seen today (Worlds.com, ActiveWorlds.com…). I’ve started a company developing technologies for such virtual environments back in 1996 (a bit before its time) and have been a lead developer at another company, Virtual Ego, back in 2000-2001. At Virtual Ego we had some interesting ideas about semi-autonomous avatars (they would know how to behave even without explicit guidance), ability to trade avatar skills (as well as items), and spontaneously interacting objects (items know how to interact with each other). Unfortunately, the company went out of business along with many others during the dot com bust.

These days I’m toying around with some novel ideas in this space… but I won’t join the food-fight just yet… not without some serious partner(s) and backing…

[...] overtaking her first life?  It reminds Nora of an interesting take she read at Susan Wu’s blog Wu talks about the evolution towards Web 3D. Meanwhile, Nora has recently become obsessed with the [...]

I do agree 3D will be the future. Will this happen only on the web or will this be adoped in softwares, hardwares. Will this drive any benefit to datacenters. Now everyone talks about web2.0 in whatever they do. I would like to see some good examples of how avatars can make difference in services, support and marketing.

I am an IT professional, I use powerful PC’s all the time and I am no stranger to the 3D capabilities of computers.

However I still remain unconvinced that 3D internet would increase usability; and also that Web 3.0 has anything to do with 3 dimensions.

[...] about Web 3.0 — although I wouldn’t count on common sense showing up ’til version sixteen. SXSW Panel: Web 2.0 to Web 3D [part 1] if you had to pick the lamest, overused and repeatedly-failed concept in computing what would it [...]

[...] Virtual hangouts are where people can engage each other using imaginary characters in imaginary environments. They have been around and popular in Europe and Asia for years. However, they appear to be gaining traction in the United States as of late. Some commentators even believe that the type of experience provided by these destinations could very well become integral to the forthcoming Web 3.0 era. [...]

[...] Virtual hangouts are where people can engage each other using imaginary characters in imaginary environments. They have been around and popular in Europe and Asia for years. However, they appear to be gaining traction in the United States as of late. Some commentators even believe that the type of experience provided by these destinations could very well become integral to the forthcoming Web 3.0 era. [...]

[...] Virtual hangouts are where people can engage each other using imaginary characters in imaginary environments. They have been around and popular in Europe and Asia for years. However, they appear to be gaining traction in the United States as of late. Some commentators even believe that the type of experience provided by these destinations could very well become integral to the forthcoming Web 3.0 era. [...]

[...] Virtual hangouts are where people can engage each other using imaginary characters in imaginary environments. They have been around and popular in Europe and Asia for years. However, they appear to be gaining traction in the United States as of late. Some commentators even believe that the type of experience provided by these destinations could very well become integral to the forthcoming Web 3.0 era. [...]

Immesion does NOT have to equal 3-D anything. And no, its not necessarily going toprogress to the point where we have avatar walking around a virtual world interacting for us…if that were the case Zwinky would be our only interactive medium.

[...] Virtual hangouts are where people can engage each other using imaginary characters in imaginary environments. They have been around and popular in Europe and Asia for years. However, they appear to be gaining traction in the United States as of late. Some commentators even believe that the type of experience provided by these destinations could very well become integral to the forthcoming Web 3.0 era. [...]

what about secondlife.com ?

[...] all about immersion Susan Wu has written a lovely post in which she captures very elegantly some thoughts about what the next generation web might [...]

http://ohlabundi.biz/tramadol/tramadol-buy.php