Semantic Identity Crisis
Clearly, the semantic web/Web 3.0 has started to spill from the academic drawing boards into the mainstream. If you don't believe me, here's two pieces of proof: Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense article in New York Times...
Hello (semantic) world!
Finally here! This is the blog that will track everything relevant in the semantic web/Web 3.0 world, from both a technology and business utilization perspective. I have been a "student" of this area for quite some time, and am working...
Where is the Semantic Web Killer App? (Part 2)
June 18, 2008 By Dan Grigorovici
First, more effectively means "more granularly," and the typical examples from Semantic Web arguments and use cases are related to situations when you're looking for very deep information which search engines cannot retrieve or cannot be relevant because they don't "understand" in machine language what the source information is "about". There is a flaw with the use of this argument for a business case though, and that is: we as users only spend less than 5.2% of the time in active information search, versus 42.6% in content browsing, or other Internet functional behaviors (as per Online Publishers Association's "Internet Activity Index" with data from April 2008, available here), which effectively means that we can't use deep information search as our only Semantic Web use case scenario.
The second means "more accessible," as in "more queryable." The flaw with this argument is that quite honestly, even though it's a great thing to query the web as a database, most of us, common users are not DBA's, don't think as one, and will never do so. So a query interface such as the few that exist today makes no immediate user sense to the large mass of potential adopters.
All in all, I think we need to refine our picks for the top examples when building the Semantic Web business and consumer case; that we need to go back to Business and Product Management/Marketing 101 by studying the consumer, starting with the business focus first, then using Semantic Web as the way to solve the most important problems first. I really don't see a lot of Semantic Web business cases thought out from this perspective, and I think we should start thinking this way.
5. A credibility issue is never solved with a new catchphrase
We missed a boat with the "Semantic Web" phrase; it has gotten a bad vibe through various circles, and there is an air of disbelief we need to break in a different way. Recently, there has been increased talk about replacing this term with the newer "Linked Data" (also the name of the LinkedData Planet Conference, organized by Jupiter Events on June 17-18, where you can find me, and I want you to come and ask the hard questions, and help our community solve them).
But I tend to think that the reason why we have difficulty using the former term was that we did not do a proper job on solving the issues above. Replacing it with a new terminology is a good strategy but will not help us if we won't address the same problems, or if we do it the same old way, upside down. I hope that this post will spur plenty of commentaries, cause plenty of digestive problems, or at least enough to help us re-focus through debate, constructive criticism, and collaboration, in addressing these issues (and others which I will tackle in future posts). Only this way will we be able to "dog food" our own agenda for data/information openness and the growth of a strong Semantic Web business community.
Dan Grigorovici is an authority on the semantic web and advertising. He is vice president of data strategies and analytics at Tacoda, a division of AOL that runs behavioral targeting advertising networks. Prior to Tacoda, Dan worked at Digitas as the vice president/associate director of digital analytics. His startup, Disruptive Logic, is building Life Engine, a consumer cross-channel intelligent agent technology that will personalize the Internet.
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