'Web 4.0' and the blockchain: What are they and why should brands care?

This article looks ahead to the 'fourth age' of the internet - Web 4.0 - which will be characterised by the digitisation of everything in the 'internet of things' and mass scale data collection, including through wearables.

'Web 4.0' and the blockchain: What are they and why should brands care?

Jean-Paul EdwardsOMD

The internet's story can, arguably, be broken down into a series of ten-year mini-epochs, each of which describes the nature of the network – or web – developing within it.

During the first age, in the mid-1990s, mass use of the internet took root as PCs became widely used and search engines emerged as the primary way to find information.

The second age, in the early-to-mid-noughties, witnessed the growth of social media as home broadband, and then mobile internet services, gained scale.

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