7 Signs That Semantic Web Is Crossing The Chasm To The Mainstream
This is the half-yearly report card on the Semantic Web. How are we doing in 2010? The breakthrough to the mainstream was predicted by Gartner to be in 2008. Oops, that did not happen. Gartner was not alone in predicting breakthrough only to be disappointed by the powers of inertia. So then we entered the “trough of disillusionment” when semantic web was banned by anybody trying to raise money or get a project approved.
But it feels different this time. Yes, we are evangelists here, not just reporters. We want this to be successful. And we know that wanting does not make it happen. But the signs of breakthrough now seem too real to dismiss.
In this post we look at 7 signs that the semantic web is crossing the chasm to the moanstream.
Image Courtesy Flickr and Paul Watson and (of course Geoffrey Moore)
This is the half-yearly report card on the Semantic Web. How are we doing in 2010? The breakthrough to the mainstream was predicted by Gartner to be in 2008. Oops, that did not happen. Gartner was not alone in predicting breakthrough only to be disappointed by the powers of inertia. So then we entered the “trough of disillusionment” when semantic web was banned by anybody trying to raise money or get a project approved.
But it feels different this time. Yes, we are evangelists here, not just reporters. We want this to be successful. And we know that wanting does not make it happen. But the signs of breakthrough now seem too real to dismiss.
In this post we look at 7 signs that the semantic web is crossing the chasm to the moanstream.
Image Courtesy Flickr and Paul Watson and (of course Geoffrey Moore)
The 7 Signs
1. RDFa Adoption By Search & Social Media Giants
2. XBRL Momentum Impacting Enterprise Software
3. Semantic ECommerce
4. VC Funded Exits
5. BioPharma Makes Enterprise Software Take Ontology Seriously
6. RDFa Momentum Pulls Support For Higher Level Standards
7. RDFa Momentum Brings In The Mainstream Tools
1. RDFa Adoption By Search & Social Media Giants
We have written about this many times on this site, just click on the RDF category to see all the stories. In summary, when Google, Facebook and Twitter all agree on RDFa (to greater or lesser degree), you can be confident that RDFa momentum is strong.
2. XBRL Momentum Impacting Enterprise Software
This is a niche crossing but it is a huge niche – financial information systems. You can see our XBRL category coverage here. XBRL is machine-readable, like RDF. But there is human-readable version called Inline XBRL (or iXBRL). The ability for both machines and humans to read the same metadata seems key to mainstream breakthrough.
3. Semantic ECommerce
Mainstream adoption means a really simple value proposition. How about: “sell more stuff because more people can find your stuff online”? That is simple. This maybe the driver for Twitter Annotations as we explore here. Facebook Open Graph Protocol is hoovering up Likes to use as a recommendation engine to drive ecommerce sales. Best Buy gets a 30% SEO improvement by using RDFa. This is not academic at all, this is very, very big money and a value proposition that any business executive can understand.
4. VC Funded Exits & Fund Raising
Siri was a success story for the investors. Palantir raised money at close to $1 billion valuation. Jeff Revesz, a 27 year old entrepreneur, sold Adaptive Semantics to Huffington Post because they had a unique solution to a critical problem. These success stories will lead to more funding and more exits at good valuations, which will of course lead to more funding. You don’t sell anything by calling it “semantic web”, you use semantic web technology to solve real problems. That is happening.
5. BioPharma Makes Enterprise Software Take Ontology Seriously
The BioPharma business is huge and ontologies are critical to this, as we report here from an interview with IBM. BioPharma crunches huge data sets, so this is important to the enterprise IT vendors. When a Pharma giant says “we want better support for RDF triples”, firms like IBM, Oracle and HP listen. When they develop ontologies, the payoff is big and so the budgets are not skimpy.
6. RDFa Momentum Pulls Support For Higher Level Standards
You see this in a small way with Rule Interchange Format (RIF). This has been a part of the stack that few people paid attention to. But if it could become the key converting between RDFa as used by say Open Graph Protocol and RDFa as used by Twitter Annotations. Suddenly developers will start learning RIF and evolving that standard in the marketplace.
7. RDFa Momentum Brings In The Mainstream Tools
This is why we report on Drupal a lot. But we also see Calais making RDFa accessible to every publisher. WordPress is not yet on top of RDFa, but we are starting to see third party plug-ins.
It’s The Network Effect That Matters
These 7 momentum-drivers are significant independently, but it is when they feed off each other that we get amplification. These are exciting times for the semantic web.
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The 7 Signs
1. RDFa Adoption By Search & Social Media Giants
2. XBRL Momentum Impacting Enterprise Software
3. Semantic ECommerce
4. VC Funded Exits
5. BioPharma Makes Enterprise Software Take Ontology Seriously
6. RDFa Momentum Pulls Support For Higher Level Standards
7. RDFa Momentum Brings In The Mainstream Tools
1. RDFa Adoption By Search & Social Media Giants
We have written about this many times on this site, just click on the RDF category to see all the stories. In summary, when Google, Facebook and Twitter all agree on RDFa (to greater or lesser degree), you can be confident that RDFa momentum is strong.
2. XBRL Momentum Impacting Enterprise Software
This is a niche crossing but it is a huge niche – financial information systems. You can see our XBRL category coverage here. XBRL is machine-readable, like RDF. But there is human-readable version called Inline XBRL (or iXBRL). The ability for both machines and humans to read the same metadata seems key to mainstream breakthrough.
3. Semantic ECommerce
Mainstream adoption means a really simple value proposition. How about: “sell more stuff because more people can find your stuff online”? That is simple. This maybe the driver for Twitter Annotations as we explore here. Facebook Open Graph Protocol is hoovering up Likes to use as a recommendation engine to drive ecommerce sales. Best Buy gets a 30% SEO improvement by using RDFa. This is not academic at all, this is very, very big money and a value proposition that any business executive can understand.
4. VC Funded Exits & Fund Raising
Siri was a success story for the investors. Palantir raised money at close to $1 billion valuation. Jeff Revesz, a 27 year old entrepreneur, sold Adaptive Semantics to Huffington Post because they had a unique solution to a critical problem. These success stories will lead to more funding and more exits at good valuations, which will of course lead to more funding. You don’t sell anything by calling it “semantic web”, you use semantic web technology to solve real problems. That is happening.
5. BioPharma Makes Enterprise Software Take Ontology Seriously
The BioPharma business is huge and ontologies are critical to this, as we report here from an interview with IBM. BioPharma crunches huge data sets, so this is important to the enterprise IT vendors. When a Pharma giant says “we want better support for RDF triples”, firms like IBM, Oracle and HP listen. When they develop ontologies, the payoff is big and so the budgets are not skimpy.
6. RDFa Momentum Pulls Support For Higher Level Standards
You see this in a small way with Rule Interchange Format (RIF). This has been a part of the stack that few people paid attention to. But if it could become the key converting between RDFa as used by say Open Graph Protocol and RDFa as used by Twitter Annotations. Suddenly developers will start learning RIF and evolving that standard in the marketplace.
7. RDFa Momentum Brings In The Mainstream Tools
This is why we report on Drupal a lot. But we also see Calais making RDFa accessible to every publisher. WordPress is not yet on top of RDFa, but we are starting to see third party plug-ins.
It’s The Network Effect That Matters
These 7 momentum-drivers are significant independently, but it is when they feed off each other that we get amplification. These are exciting times for the semantic web.
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• Don’t forget to propose your startup for our Semantic Web Impact Awards. The deadline is Sept. 15.
The 
Eric Franzon
VP Community
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