"The Semantic Web" is often viewed as a tad academic, the sort of thing that geeks, librarians and scientists get excited about. It is not sexy like social media. Well you sexy social media hipsters, just remember the new golden rule - "the geek shall inherit the earth."

There is a reason you need to think about this semantic stuff. In short, it is the key to the "web's golden triangle." This is the term coined by Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. As he puts it:

"The three current big megatrends in the web/tech sector are mobile, social and real time." This post looks at how the Semantic Web is the key to this golden triangle.

Here is the picture with Semantic Web as the core:

This is how they inter-relate:

• Social. We will need much smarter semantic tools that to turn social chatter into useful information within the constraints of privacy.

• Mobile. Our attention span on a mobile device is much shorter than on the web (which is shorter than in print). So we will need smarter semantic tools to extract the meaningful essence.

• Real Time. Getting information just in time is important. But without smarter semantic tools we will be "sipping from a fire hose."

Data - structured, semi-structured and plain messy

When I think of the next phase of the Internet I think of data, masses of data; data of every type we can imagine.

Some of this data will be structured in the way we currently think of as structured, which means structured upfront by clever people who create relational data models. Masses of this structured data already exists and more is being created every second from transactions being done by millions of people.

But the golden triangle cannot rely on the structure upfront model forced by the relational database technology. A structure on the fly model has to emerge and that will require semantic technology.

Other data will be semi-structured, in spreadsheets, in XBRL tagged documents, in RDF triples, in microformats and RDFa and in formats yet to be invented. The technology to mash this all together and make it useful is right now in the very, very early stage. The killer apps are yet to be invented. The winning platforms and standards are today still in labs, committees and garages.

These Are Early Days But The Opportunity Is Big

But we will see this new technology because the opportunities created by this new wealth of data are huge. Whole industries are up for grabs. That land grab is what this series of posts will focus on. The new technologies are what we report on here every day.

It is hard to imagine the quantity of data that is being made available because every type is growing at the same time and each feeds the other:

• Every transaction creates new data

• Every online conversation creates new data

• The government creates new data and makes it all available.

• Every person creates new data from their own brain and makes it available so we will want to work with them (aka blogs and Tweets).

Some of the new applications that make this data available in useful ways are being given the obvious Data As A Service (DaaS) moniker. But I think of that as a transitional phase. All data needs software to make it useful. All services will run on a mix of data and software. The old idea of software, that you acquired it and then put data into it, will seem as quaint as buying perpetual licenses and servers.

David Gets A More Powerful Slingshot

The other idea that will seem historically quaint is that big companies have an advantage because they have a lot of data. The data they have in their transactional databases are vast, but like a grain of sand compared to what will be available to a single individual in a dorm room in Bangalore or a garage in Boise. Governments will ensure this level playing field, as they are already doing with initiatives such as Data.Gov and the SEC XBRL mandate.

That shifting of power from companies to individuals and small teams is historically critical. Today in America, around 25% of the population is self-employed; 70% work for small business or themselves. Only 30% of the population works for big companies. Yet large companies today control 2/3 of US GDP; 50 years ago they only controlled 1/3. We may have seen the high water mark of that trend and it may now be reversing. The leveling of the data playing field is a big part of that historic trend. Data is power and it is being liberated.

It Is AND not OR

It is not semantic OR social, it is semantic AND social.

One technology does not replace (let alone "kill") another technology. A new technology builds on the current technology and solves a problem created by that technology. It is not semantic web versus social web. It is both together.

Social media has created masses of new information that flows in real time to and from our mobile devices. That is great, but it is also a problem. Our poor befuddled brains need a bit of help figuring out which bits of that fire hose will help us.

In short, as Clay Shirky tells us, we don't have an information overload problem, we have a filtering problem. Semantic technology is key to that filtering.

It is OK, you will NOT need to understand what OWL or RDF or Sparql or ontology means to get value from this series of posts.

This series of posts looks at markets that are being massively disrupted. First, let's look at the meta-plot, at the perfect storm that is doing all the disrupting.