While I wasn't paying attention, the team working on the Metaverse Roadmap wrapped their project and published the results. By way of background:

Over the past year the Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF) and its supporting foresight partners have explored the virtual and 3D future of the World Wide Web in a first-of-its-kind cross-industry public foresight project, the Metaverse Roadmap (MVR). We use the term Metaverse in a way that includes and builds upon Neal Stephenson’s coinage in the cyberpunk science fiction novel, Snow Crash, which envisioned a future broadly reshaped by virtual and 3D technologies.

The MVR has “near-term” anticipation horizon of ten years (to 2017), a “longer-term” speculation horizon of twenty years (to 2025), and a charter to discover early indicators of significant developments ahead. Seeking diverse points of view, our process included an invitational Metaverse Roadmap Summit, public and expert surveys, a few workshops and roundtables at major U.S. conferences, social meetups, and a public wiki. Many helpful people from the IT, virtual worlds, professional, academic, futurist, and lay communities contributed ideas to the MVR.

The Metaverse comprises four components near and dear to the hearts of all Speculi:

Virtual Worlds
Mirror Worlds
Augmented Reality
Lifelogging

You might begin with the excellent summary found here. If you think the web of today is a distinctly different beast from the web of 1997, you are correct. But we ain't seen nothin' yet.