Is WEB3 the next big thing on the internet? What is it?

The term Web3 has suddenly become popular and is often referred to in the literature. But what is Web3 and what does it entail?
To properly understand Web3, it is important to know what the preceding Web1 and Web2 entailed. Web1 refers roughly to the initial period from 1991 to 2004, and consisted of a collection of links and home pages. Websites were very static, read-only and had very little or no interactivity. Users were mere consumers of content.
Web2 was a major improvement and has often been referred to as the “read/write” version of the Internet, based around the idea of “the web as platform”, where users not only consume content, but can interact with the content or produce their own content and publish it on blogs, wikis, internet forums and marketplaces, making activities such as online banking and shopping possible. Some years later, the widely popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram took user-created content and sharing to a totally new level. Web2 or the “social web” is generally considered to have started around 2005 and continues to the present day.