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Computers have been connected over long distances through networking protocols for a long time. However, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the internet as we know it took off. Of course, the internet was a much different place back then. Several evolutions in technology allowed for a web that’s more dynamic and business-friendly than it was at its inception. Now, the internet is set to undergo a fresh, new transformation. Let’s take a look at web3 .0 technology, and how it changes things for businesses.

We’ve talked about how much the internet has changed over the years but in order to better understand the innovation that drives web 3.0, we’ll need to take a closer look at exactly what those changes are. Below is a roadmap of the internet’s past, and future.

The first web pages were relatively static. Any movement on the screen was the result of animated GIFs. These GIFS were often overused on the personal homepages of your closest friends. These personal web pages served a similar purpose to social media sites today, which were not technically feasible at the time.

Once web technologies allowed pages to be updated dynamically, a greater world opened up to web developers. Websites become more interactive, and a greater focus on user content became the norm. Rather than individual personal web pages that required the user to craft their own HTML for each page, social media sites popped up and largely displaced the personal web page. Personalized viewing experiences now drive everything from retail to entertainment, driven in large part by data collected on behalf of a few large companies.

The next evolution brings even more control to the user. No longer mere content production agents, web 3.0 will bring ownership of data to the people who generate it. Furthermore, it will run in an entirely decentralized way, removing the reliance on third-party providers and large, data-hungry companies. Underpinning the entire thing is distributed ledger technology, the most common of which is blockchain. This makes web 3.0 a more secure and transparent solution than its predecessors.

The improvements that web 3.0 brings provide great benefit not just to users, but to most businesses who operate on the internet as well. While third parties who don’t adapt their business model may find themselves displaced, everyone else has exciting opportunities to capitalize on the features of the new paradigm.

Currently, there are a lot of third parties in between a business and its customers. For example, most businesses rely on other companies to provide web hosting, data collection, and other internet related functionality. If one of these companies goes out of business, anyone relying on them must find and implement an alternative or risk a hit to their own business. Because web 3.0 is distributed across peers, this problem doesn’t exist.

Third-party providers going out of business isn’t the only time problems arise. On several occasions, Amazon’s AWS service has gone down, leading many major businesses without access to the vital resources they need to host their business and bringing large portions of the internet to its knees. With web 3.0 technologies, these types of problems are no longer an issue, because no one entity is responsible for the transfer of information.

Every bit of data exchanged on web 3.0 goes through distributed ledger technology, secured through the use of blockchain and cryptography. This has exciting ramifications for business. For example, products shipped from a factory can be tracked all the way to the consumer, with the locations verified and stored on the blockchain. This allows for built-in tracking of shipments, but also for a reliable way for consumers to have confidence that the product they receive is genuine and not counterfeit.

At some levels of business, taking payments is as easy as setting up a PayPal or Stripe integration and awaiting the money. But things aren’t always so fast behind the scenes. Waiting for payments to clear, especially those from different countries, is still a process that can take days. The distributed ledger technology that web 3.0 is built on already shows great promise in allowing banks themselves to reduce the time required. The transparency and security of the blockchain allow everyone to place more faith in one another and reduce the number of time-consuming steps of checks and balances a money move from place to place. But web 3.0 technology can be built with its own tokens, allowing effortless payment in cryptocurrency without the need for third party payment processors.

On the internet, users create a lot of data. On a web 2.0 site, that data is collected and monetised by other companies. With web 3.0, a user’s data belongs to them. Information about them is stored in their wallet, and only they decide who it gets shared with and under which terms. Although this means the end of third-party data, that is already on the way out. Instead, businesses will now have to rely on first-party data. Because all data collected must be opt-in, this first-party data is more likely to be reliable and come from engaged customers. Companies can even offer customer rewards in exchange for data from their users, creating a win-win scenario that builds better relationships with customers by simply shifting who gets paid for their data.

Web 3.0 promises to usher in a new era in the way users interact with the internet. However, there are still some hurdles that must be overcome before it’s ready to make its debut to the masses.

• High technical requirements – As with any new technology, the technical requirements to run web 3.0 applications are higher than those for older generations of the web.
• Steep learning curve – Currently, understanding how to develop for, or sometimes even interact with, web 3.0 requires a more technical background than other forms of web pages. Though, in their early days before user-friendly tools were invented, so did previous iterations of the internet.
• Security concerns – While the data stored on web 3.0 is backed by cryptography and is considered fairly secure, there are still concerns with other areas of the technology. High profile hacks of the passwords used to control accounts have fed these fuels, and require a solution.

The internet and how we interact with it are constantly changing, and Allo is dedicated to changing with it. Our goal of bringing connectivity to the entire country cannot be met if we don’t stay at the forefront of how people use that connectivity.  To learn more about how Allo can keep you connected contact us today.