It’s one thing to know there are different levels of Web functionality (1.0, 2.0 and 3.0). It’s a better thing to dig deeper to understand the differences between the three. Here are some excellent sites for you to explore - take notes and brainstorm how these might help you build a better Internet experience for your brand.

Web 1.0 - To see this in action, take a good look at your own Web site and see if it only offers static, one-way information from you to your visitors. It would not be nice to single out any existing sites as Web 1.0, but you’ll know them when you…read them.

Web 2.0 - The big brands are all easy experiences of interactivity. And chances are, you have never really explored them!

• So now is the time to visit YouTube to witness video uploaded by users all over the world (search for an old commercial or video you remember; it’s great fun).
• Then it’s off to MySpace to see the largest collection of personalized Web pages in the world (look up a brand you love, like Victoria’s Secret or Pepsi to see how many “friends” they have). If you think you’re ready for your own social network, the third-party leader is Ning or you can install your own application on your servers thanks to KickApps.
• Next stop is Wikipedia. Go ahead and create a quick account and click the “edit” option to see how easy it is to update information on a Wiki. Then give it a whirl yourself at Wetpaint or PBwiki - it’s free.
• Last stop is Google’s Blogspot, one of the largest collections of blogs in the world, or the even more powerful Wordpress. Search for a sports team you like and see how many hundreds of blogs pop up. Read at least one post. Comment. Repeat.

Web 3.0 - this is the AMAZING stuff. First stop is a “content aggregation” site. Jump right in with NetVibes or iGoogle. See those home pages with all the widgets? You can scroll or search through thousands of options to choose custom content you want to appear on your home page. Your custom home page might have widgets for: your first-choice newspaper, today’s weather, the blog from your preferred presidential candidate, daily fitness videos and your favorite online poker game.

Now take another look at all of those Web 2.0 pages from above. See those search bars? See those “keywords” at the bottom? See the RSS or Atom feed options? See the options to “Digg” or mark it as “del.i.cious“? Those are the funnels, the targeting tools, that are helping users pinpoint, categorize, rank and channel related content for themselves and for the next users who search for similar content. That is what is transitioning us into Web 3.0.

And please take note - everything above is available to you for free. Is this starting to feel like too much information? Imagine how the World Wide Web feels! Don’t worry about grasping it all right now. Just know this - if you want to stay current, connected and relevant to your brand base, interactive Web 2.0 functionality is a minimum requirement for your Web site. Upcoming posts will walk you through some of those options.

If you want to go a little 3.0 before you go, click the “Digg” button next to one of these posts (or another article you read online). Create an account, and submit something to the community.

Now, go surf the Web - and, please, come back and post your reactions after the first time you use some of these wildly inspired sites.

We’ve all heard the terms Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. So what do they mean - and more importantly, what do they mean to you as a business person?

Web 1.0 was about accessing content. This was the dawning of the Internet Age, and the revolution was digitized. Thanks to Netscape, your AOL account, Juno.com, etc., you could connect to the Internet and read information immediately. That information, however, could be published only by those who understood how to code and upload. Web 1.0 was a revolutionary but one-way street.

Web 2.0 was about interacting with content. Once new tools made it possible for users to start publishing their own content to the Internet, Web 2.0 was born. Videos were uploaded. Blogs were posted. Wikis were…pediaed. And Time declared “You” the person of the year for embracing the newly accessible World Wide Web and exploding it into billions of pages of content. Web 2.0 was a two-way street…with people driving all over the road.

Web 3.0 is about aggregating content. Have you counted your bookmarks lately? Done a Google search and gotten fewer than 20 pages of results? The free-for-all of the interactive online community generated a lot of content, but how do you wade through it all to find the specific content you want? Thanks to keywords, tags, feeds and widgets, Internet content now is entirely portable. You don’t have to go to it; you can tell it to come to you - wherever you are! Web 3.0 portability lets users park themselves on a single Web page (like iGoogle or NetVibes) or their cell phone, find the content they want and draw it directly to them. It’s like the parking lot of the world’s biggest burger joint with car service. On skates. You stay nice and comfy in your car, and we bring your order to you.