New Year's Resolutions 2: there is no metadata!
I just came across an amazingly brilliant post by Glenn McDonald at ITA software (it's been written a while ago, last summer, but just read it entirely now). Do me a favor and read it entirely here: Never Mind the...
Where is the Semantic Web Killer App? (Part 1)
June 17, 2008 By Dan Grigorovici
Most of the current efforts are still lead by technologically deep teams, without business direction. What I mean is that most of these projects arise from deep evangelical SemWeb passion from developers, without much direction in terms of understanding and connecting with the consumer and business environment, from the basic points of view of product positioning, business strategy, marketing, sales, etc. Nick Lothian mentions how most attempts to get answers from the community end up in a "religious conversion" attempt without really answering the problem, and that is my personal experience too. I have seen people who always address the credibility problem by arguments of the form: "current web is broken, we need to do x and y," (technologically, mostly). We all know the current web is not what it could/should be, but we tend to hear and dismiss the criticisms to the Semantic Web (see "Semantic Web skeptical reactions") with more proselytizing, rather than listening to our critics and work on our "pitch."
What we need is a healthy dose of business perspective on things, and attempt to answer the following: are we trying to solve a new problem, or an old problem? If the latter, is it because our technology is better than the current one, or because we are redefining the problem in terms of our technology in a very convenient and self-serving way? What do we need the disbelievers to do to experience how much better our technology is? How do we get to adoption without asking our disbelievers to completely change their Internet behaviors?
Essential questions
If you notice, most of these questions are no different than the typical questions you might get after delivering any "elevator pitch" (whether semantic or not) to any investor. Interestingly, very little of the public rhetoric of the Semantic Web community really addresses them, and it makes me think: why should the essential Web 3.0 questions we need to answer be different than the Web 2.0, or even worse/better, Web 1.0? I believe they should NOT be different, and the fact that we're not addressing them is one of the sources of why the Semantic Web has been "talking about trying to solve easy problems since 2001," (Peter Norvig, from Nick Lothian's blog post).
All of us trying to build a Semantic startup in hopes of being part of the next killer app wave (including myself), we should make it a must to hire/motivate/associate with and learn something from great business problem solvers, whether sales/marketing, business strategists, product managers, who are purposely non-semantic web evangelists. If we are trying to convince the disbelievers, we should really follow Rhetoric 101: we should not ask our audience to rise up to our (technical) arguments, but we should be the ones adapting our logic to answer the questions posed in theirs.
And the truth is: answering any of these questions has nothing to do with Semantic Web, or even technology in general. Why? Because technology is a ladder helping us in solving a non-technology problem, and not a goal in itself. In other words: the problems the Semantic Web technology is solving are not semantic, nor complex or technological; they are simple: how do I get to the information I need without having to navigate on 100+ pages, how is this better for both consumers and businesses.
We need to be able to answer them without launching in lengthy exhortations of RDF, SPARQL, as supporting arguments. We need to use the same language as our disbelievers do, and having them (want to) come to us because they cannot do it without. Now, that IS what a killer app should be, is it not? My experience is that in our working so hard on the technology (and becoming so focused on insuring it delivers), we have forgotten to build what's essential: the business and consumer "hooks" -- the simple, the necessary.
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