With the slide below on the Semantic Technology Value Chain, I attempted to present my view of the Semantic Web world(s), to inform the discussion recently started through the latest Semantic Web Gang podcast on the top plays in this space. Mills Davis of the Semantic Exchange is working on a much more detailed version of this market segmentation effort, so this is not intended to represent more than a personal overview.
(click on the picture for a larger view)
Looking at this value chain, my working hypothesis is that the initial semweb killer app is likely to be a synergistic Semantic Data Store fed by a popular Semantic App or Semantic Engine. My rationale is that the Semantic Data Store is where most of the semantic web intelligence will reside (dynamically), massive human input is needed to build that repository, and humans won't put in the effort unless they personally derive some value from doing so. So the proposed recipe is to build a useful app (or more than one), collect and process all the human input collected, do this in a quick iterative fashion, and give third-party programmers some (restricted) API access to your metadata repository as a way to wet the appetites and keep feeding the metadata beast.
Twine and Open Calais are both interesting contenders, but the competition for the title of semantic champion still suffer from a certain lack of heavyweights, although the game is definitely heating up. Only one thing is sure, the value of metadata is on the rise.
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With the slide below on the Semantic Technology Value Chain, I attempted to present my view of the Semantic Web world(s), to inform the discussion recently started through the latest Semantic Web Gang podcast on the top plays in this space. Mills Davis of the Semantic Exchange is working on a much more detailed version of this market segmentation effort, so this is not intended to represent more than a personal overview.
(click on the picture for a larger view)
Looking at this value chain, my working hypothesis is that the initial semweb killer app is likely to be a synergistic Semantic Data Store fed by a popular Semantic App or Semantic Engine. My rationale is that the Semantic Data Store is where most of the semantic web intelligence will reside (dynamically), massive human input is needed to build that repository, and humans won't put in the effort unless they personally derive some value from doing so. So the proposed recipe is to build a useful app (or more than one), collect and process all the human input collected, do this in a quick iterative fashion, and give third-party programmers some (restricted) API access to your metadata repository as a way to wet the appetites and keep feeding the metadata beast.
Twine and Open Calais are both interesting contenders, but the competition for the title of semantic champion still suffer from a certain lack of heavyweights, although the game is definitely heating up. Only one thing is sure, the value of metadata is on the rise.
Greg Boutin is the founder of Growthroute Ventures, a management consulting firm for emerging technology ventures. Acting as outsourced executives with a cloud network of pre-selected providers, we help develop, market, fund and scale the best tech start-ups. More at growthroute.com. Greg also blogs on business matters at Growth Times.
Greg is featured monthly on the semantic web gang podcasts, speaks at events like the semantic technology and web 3.0 conferences, and works with start-ups in the information management space.