Chatting with an IT industry pal the other day, we got to wondering what might constitute web 3.0. It’s fair to say that web 2.0 is a pretty loosely defined thing, but we agreed to define it as emphasising collaboration, valuing user-generated content, and employing flexible, scripted front ends.

My pal thought web 3.0 would be a kind of merging of web and TV, whereby sites can be delivered entirely through the medium of moving images and sound. I volunteered that this, while by no means out of the question, would by a nightmare. I already despise web-sites that are overly reliant on Macromedia Flash, so I for one would not welcome further migration in this direction.

But then I am middle-aged. Perhaps the young things think Flash-based sites are just great.

My own feeling is that web 2.0 will be about filtering. It will be about saying, “I like this content, show me more like this,” and “I don’t like this content, don’t show me anything like it again.”

This filtered fussiness ought to be as granular as you like. Read a comment by an idiot? Click to filter out the bozo in future. Don’t like a particular journalist at The Guardian? Click to filter the hack out. And on the flipside, if you love the witty, incisive comments by BlabberMouth23 you should be able to click to bring them to the top, or be notified when the next pearl of wisdom is plonked on the site. Love columns by Avery Wiseman at the Grauniad? Click to have his latest thoughts flagged up large on the home page.

Of course a true web 3.0 experience would involve visiting very few actual home pages - you might see them when you first stumble across a new site. Thereafter, you’ll want to plug a feed into your reader, which will filter all of the stories, pictures, posts, videos, comments and claptrap from your feeds into categories with sorted duplicates and related items, just as Google News currently does in a much less personalised fashion.

“You’ll be able to do all of that with the semantic web,” my pal said, waving a dismissive hand.

I’m not convinced by that. My understanding is that the semantic web relies on site providers to honestly describe their content. Any innovation involving the internet in which honesty is a required element is a non starter - it will be spammed into a black hole, alongside the otherwise excellent concept of the trackback.

What do you think the next phase of the web will involve?