“A week is a long time in politics”, but it is a lot longer in Internet time. Just yesterday we wrote that “Twitter Embraces Semantic Web, What About Facebook?” With F8 underway we knew some big announcements were coming, but we did not think they would have much to do with the Semantic Web. Then I saw this tweet from my friend Alex Iskold (a really talented engineer/entrepreneur who has been using semantic technology in live services for a long time):

“Facebook just nailed Semantic Web.”

That seemed worth checking out. Here is what I found so far.

You Can Build Your App On The Open Web With Data From Facebook

Facebook’s OpenGraph looks like it overcomes one big problem. You can build your app on the open web using data from Facebook. Just like you can do with data from Twitter. My joke yesterday about Facebook’s position being,”grow your food on my land, serf, but don’t ever forget who owns the land” now can be forgotten.

These connections are now persistent and across services. That is a big deal.

Listening to Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote (on F8 Live), his emphasis was on connecting the “social graph” with other graphs from companies such as Yelp and Pandora. In other words, connecting people to interests and intentions. Facebook has always struggled with the fact that private conversations are not monetizable (don’t try monetizing my phone call dude!). But Zuckerberg talked about making these connections between social graph and interest graph:

“more semantically aware”

That is a big deal.

Oh, It Is Just Microformats, Not Real Linked Data

Another more sceptical person in the audience tweeted:

“If Facebook implemented OpenGraph as LinkedData, it would be start of the Semantic Web on a global scale. But no…”

But Maybe Simplicity Is The Whole Point

Talking to some sources (while watching Zuckerberg live and watching Tweets, so please excuse typos), it may be that simplicity is the point.

At 30,000 foot, Facebook markup looks like Twitter Annotations. But the one that will win is the one who makes the markup easiest.

That is one reason we see Drupal with native RDF in Drupal 7 as a big winner.

Facebook markup is inside the page. Twitter cannot do that (140 character limit). This may make Annotations hard to implement in practice (hard being measured in seconds when we are talking about the behavior of millions of people).

Facebook’s has semantic objects (books, movies, restaurants etc) native on the profile.

It Has Been A Good Week For The Semantic Web

What is next? Stay tuned….

SemTechBiz is Less Than 2 Weeks Away

The Semantic Tech & Business Conference (SemTechBiz) is coming to San Francisco on June 3-7! Join us for case studies, innovative panels, tutorials, and keynotes that will provide you with practical advice, hands-on guidance, and breakthrough approaches to solving business problems with semantic technology. Passes go up $200 at the door. Sign up now and save !