Whatever You Call It, Get Ready for Greater Relevance
It’s been nearly 10 years since Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the worldwide web, expressed his vision of a “semantic web,” in which all web data — and the meaning of that data — could be read by machines. Since then, much of the slow-moving progress toward this smarter and more powerful web has been courtesy of academics and data librarians.
Recently, however, the semantic web has been enjoying a commercial revival of sorts and is often referred to by the new buzzword “Web 3.0.” Given how insane the pace of life is these days, I thought I’d offer a few thoughts on what I’ve been learning about it.
Since I can already feel the rising tide of negative comments as that version number graces the screen, bear with me for a second. Semantic web is just one of a few things often referred to as Web 3.0 — others include topics like data portability or mobile web. But I think entrepreneur Nova Spivack offered the most useful definition by simply calling it the third decade of the web (2010 to 2020) and referring to the technology trends that will hit maturity during that time. Most importantly, the next generation of the web will bring us out of information overload and be more relevant and meaningful.
But Web 3.0 is not just about improving the consumer experience. And it isn’t some industry ploy to sell you more services. The next-generation web — the semantic web — aims to solve some of today’s biggest problems in marketing.
Continues @ Advertising Age