In the interest of transparency I should note that most of my thoughts on this were triggered by this article which is on a better site than mine, so you might as well start there.
Way back in the day people started using the term "Web 2.0" to hype the rise of social media. Since that is old hat, people have started talking about "Web 3.0" which usually means something related to blockchain technology. This could refer to semething cool if it meant a truly decentralized and personal web. But usually it's some spiel to sell NFTs or whatever. I'm sure that before long people will be using "Web 3.0" to refer sites with generative AI engagement.
But whatever. Marketing hype for new trends is as old as technology, and has been constant for a century. The thing I really want to focus on here is how "Web 1.0" has been redefined in the wake of this new "Web 3.0." In particular it's often called the "read-only" web with Web 2.0 being the "read-write" web and Web 3.0 adding some new verb (such as "read-write-own".) Here is the first result that came up on a Brave search (which doesn't mean it is great, since we all know that web searches suck, but it is representative of the types of things I've seen said about Web 1.0 rescently. Let's see the introduction given:
Web 1.0 was characterized by several distinctive features reflecting the early stages of Internet technology and user interaction. Unlike later iterations, the early Internet primarily consisted of static web pages that were interconnected by hyperlinks, without interactivity, user-generated content, and rich media experiences. The later infrastructure that would allow for “read/write” Internet functionality had not yet been developed.
The Web 1.0 user was, for the most part, passive, and much of the user input took place offline. Users could only view and read the information presented without the ability to contribute or interact meaningfully with the content or other users.
Static webpages interconected by hyperlinks. Hey, that describes this website! And that's all fair enough since I'm intentionally designing this site with 90's web sensibilities. But note what is said next: there is no user-generated content or interactivity. This is a claim made everywhere, and is at the core of why they call it the "read-only" web. Now my first objection is that the most common type of websites in these days was the personal website. Personal websites are by definition made by individual users and hence are user generated content. On top of that it was not uncommon for people to post comics, art, music, stories or even things like Doom WADs made by their friends. (I had some links from the Geocities Restorative project to prove this, but it's down and I don't think it's fair to have readers wade through that huge geocities torrent to verify my claims. Hopefully the link is back up by the time that I finish this article.) Personal pages could easily end up with conversations by linking to each other (you can see a minor verison of that in the first line of this very article.) And of course there were things like guestbooks or e-mail links to the creator on many sites.
If we return to the technopedia article, something mysterious about it is the claim that the user input "took place offline." If you go further into the article it argues that users were forced to discuss through e-mail lists... which is still obviously on the internet. It's not on the world wide web, sure, but note that later on it talks about "Software as a Service" as being a positive aspect of Web 2.0 since it allowed software to be distributed online. Now you can distribute software online without the framework as "software as a service" by simply allowing your end user to own what he purchases, but that's a whole nother article entirely. The important thing here is that they are counting software that is distributed and used over the internet as "online" in which case e-mail is also online. But also, if we are allowing software to count as "online" then we have plenty of that in Web 1.0. In 1997 you could chat in the Battle.net lobby for Diablo 1. Or play an entirely online game in Ultima Online. Or use a dedicated chat program (AOL Instant Messenger also came out that year.) There were also tons of message boards.
If 1997 is somehow "too late" to count as Web 1.0, then we can go back to Usenet, BBS services, Multi-User Dungeons, etc. People will interacting with each other over the internet in real time back through the 80's.
But of course 1997 isn't too late. The most commonly given starting date for Web 2.0 is 2004. People are seriously selling the idea that there was no user interaction in the internet before 2004, which is idiotic. It rises to the level of the Ministry of Truth changing history. Unfortunately this lie is believed by many younger people, since they have no experience with the old web and it is not easy to find any accurate information about it (which is part of why I have this website.)