Shel Holtz, who has been in corporate communications for 30 years, recently wrote a post expressing enthusiasm for the coming 3D Web.
Holtz recognized the marketing failures in Second Life from the past few years, but rather than dwell on the negative, he writes about the many organizations and individuals that continue to use Second Life for innovative means: a toy designer, an architecture team, a video display company, and a people mover company. He also cites a Business Week article that outlines various startups and entrepreneurs in SL.
Holtz then concludes with some sage advice for companies:
Don’t ignore virtual worlds; you’ll be living in one soon enough. Buying into the shrug-off so many others have given Second Life will keep you from helping your company prepare for the inevitable 3D web.
Sorry dusan, this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. First of all the Web by creation and definition is a 2D experience of links. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but not in terms of offering needed information like the Web does. The web is but one of many Internet protocols, in this case “www” like ftp, pop3 and others. A 3D experience will only succeed as a new protocol, not shoving plug-in based interfaces to web pages.
The web is made up of pages, not necessarily always about one topic, but readable regardless of length and composed of various media limited only by client-side resources. A 3D experience is bound by server-side resources necessary to serve users in the same space. The Web is disconnected and fast for it while 3D is constant and managed and bound by many constant connections.
Virtual Worlds offer a contiguous experience (or they should) while the Web offers a connected through disconnected one. There will never be a 3D web and there shouldn’t be, the Web has been defined. Regardless of additions like AJAX it is still defined. Let the 3D experience find its own separate but compelling definition.
[…] push this idiocy. Dusan Writer recently posted a link to another writer’s coverage of Second Life: Dusan Writer’s Metaverse Communications Expert Vouches for 3D Web Sorry dusan, this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. First of all the Web by creation and […]
The issue of whether 3D worlds will become “like the Web” is one of those conventional wisdoms floating around that I take exception to. I think it’s a failure of imagination to picture the metaverse as either: the “flat” Web is disappearing, and the 3D Web will be neither a contiguous space of its own nor something cobbled to the back of HTML.
As I reported from VW08, you see some of this in the argument, er, I should say discussion between Raph Koster and the Lab - two philosophies of how virtual worlds will evolve, and yet I’m of the belief that while there’s room for both, neither of them are fully “right”.