If you're a technologist currently involved in the Semantic Web, or even if you're not but are interested in how the Semantic Web (linked data) eventually will 1) work within the enterprise, 2) provide value to business or 3) be used by consumers, I strongly recommend you read this article on our Semantic Web site by Dan Grigorovici.
A self-described "data geek," Dan is vice president of data strategies and analytics at Tacoda, a division of AOL that runs behavioral targeting advertising networks. He believes the Semantic Web community is undermining the technology's commercial progress by failing to make a coherent, understandable business case.
It's the lack of business focus and basic ability to answer some simple questions that are at the core of the continued lack of realization of even the smallest sign of a killer Semantic Web app.
Dan writes that he has suspected this for awhile and that his suspicions have been confirmed by talking recently with a number of venture capitalists, who for some odd reason stubbornly focus on the business proposition of any technology rather than, say, the logic of ontologies.
After more than seven years of promising the Semantic Web deliverance, we still can't get our one-pagers clear. We still can't explain our proposition to users, funders, or anyone else outside the community, what we are building and how it is better than the "dumb" (but increasingly crowd-telligent) and newspaper-ish web of today.
I've been at the LinkedData Planet conference for two days, listening to numerous speakers, and I have to agree completely. The technologists here mostly are talking to each other on their own terms, and even when they try to relate the Semantic Web to enterprise use, information management and business value, too many sound like they're speaking business as a second language. No doubt, the value is real, but I'm not sure that any venture capitalist or CEO in the audience would walk away inspired to climb on board.
Dan's piece offers some ideas to help Semantic Web technologists and entrepreneurs sharpen their pitches to the outside world, but what he really seeks to do is begin a dialog -- a collaboration, if you will -- within the Semweb community to "face the challenges coming from the business crowd and address them."
We're going to publish Part 2 of his article soon, and Dan promises to write regularly about this important issue. Stay tuned.
Comment and Contribute
