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Seeing the pic of the Diamond Exchange brought back memories... I lived less than a mile from there.
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The dry answer is that according to the French demographer, Alfred Sauvy, who first came up with the distinction back, the term "First World" refers only to developed, capitalist, industrial countries, aligned with the United States and sharing more or less common political and economic interests. Namely North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia/New Zealand.
The "second world" was the former USSR, some of Eastern Europe and a few Turkish countries, and China. Everyone else was in the third world, even though that included both rich and poor countries, capitalist and communist.
In this politically correct era, the first world is now officially refered to as "more developed" but still only covers the same countries as before. Everyone else is either "less developed" or "least developed".
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