Web 2.0 concepts and technologies have firmly established themselves as the foundation for the current wave of online innovation. What do you think will drive the next wave?

Of all the concepts I've looked at recently, I think that a mashup between Amazon and Second Life is the most interesting in terms of its implications. Their prototype allows you to wander round a virtual Amazon, add items into your shopping cart and then checkout.

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2006/08/improved_amazon.html

I think that this type of immersive experience online could drive the next generation of websites. Lets call this the "Immersive Web". It will allow me to browse around the shops , go to a virtual Facebook cafe to catch up with my friends and read my (rss fed) virtual newspaper..

It doesn't feel like such a big leap from where we are now to this type of environment on the web. Now that Second Life is hosting virtual businesses and we have very popular social networking websites. The problem is that Second Life is a walled garden environment, so I don't think it will be the platform to drive this in the long term.

I think that a real growth opportunity could come from an invasion of the living room. When the next generation set top boxes and games consoles can support this in an open standards environment, you suddenly have a significantly larger audience. I could see this type of experience fitting very well in the lean back environment of the living room.

One key challenge will be taking the learnings on customer experience from a 2D web environment into a 3D environment. Creating compelling environments that drive transactions will be a real challenge.

So we would see yet more crossover between the games developers, web developers and online and games based marketing experts.

What do you think?

Loz,

If you know what you want to buy, I agree that the existing web version works very well and is very efficient. However, E-commerce in its current form is about buying, and doesn't really challenge the offline experience of going out shopping (love it or hate it!). Shopping is a social pursuit, buying is a transaction.

The 3D environment makes the social aspect possible. In the same way that it is possible to play games on a games console together, you can shop in 3D together more easily than in 2D. It can also support virtual socialising. 

I think that the immersive web covers a very broad range of interactions where the experience is important. Some examples include buying houses, booking holidays, virtual conferences and seminars.

So imagine you want to look for a holiday with your wife / partner / mates. You all login to a travel agent website in your lunch hour from your respective offices and browse a few resorts in a 3D environment (think Google Earth + Virtual Tours etc). You can discuss what you are seeing and decide jointly which resorts you want to look at.

Second Life supports most of this, but it is essentially a closed community which aims to create a different world.

There are open standards technologies in place (see http://www.web3d.org) that will support these applications and allow organisations and communities to create their own worlds using open standards. This includes the 3D web equivalent of the hyperlink to navigate you from one "world" to another.

I think that Second Life will be used by many businesses to prove the concept of 3D interaction online. They will learn what aspects of the physical world work well virtually and which ones don't. This will not simply be a case of taking what is in the real world and moving it online. It will be about marrying what is great about the web with what is great about the real world.

On 14:30:43 10 August 2007 Loz wrote:

Why re-create a virtual shop when the web version works perfectly well?

I'd rather spend 10 seconds finding a book via Amazon's search than having to log on Second Life, walk down some virtual isle and have to look around for the book amongst many. Time spent on the task: 10 minutes.

A 3D environment is useful in this context when a product can is better experienced in a 3D environment.

Second Life will work very well for estate agents but not booksellers.