Tag: semantic web (page 1 of 1)

An introduction to Web 3.0 for Social Data Week

Next week is Social Media Week. That's well known. What's less well known is that this is Social Data Week, and this facet of social underpins a lot of the stuff on next week's agenda. Nevertheless, many people with social in their job description, from public relations to marketing to 'digital', are not yet fluent in the data foundations.

One aspect of social data that particularly excites me is the Semantic Web, often referred to as Web 3.0. According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Web 3.0 describes the web as a universal medium for the exchange of data, information and knowledge. It's an awesome vision that's playing out right now.

BrandwatchBrandwatch is one company that understands social data better than most.

I've known Giles Palmer, the founder and CEO of Brandwatch, since I interviewed him for one of the first ebooks on social analytics all the way back in 2008. Brandwatch shares my enthusiasm for the Semantic Web and related technologies, so I'm delighted that the company has sponsored the production of this stack.

If you're procuring or reviewing your current choice of social listening, analytics and intelligence service, then check them out.

Future Vistas for SEO

Brighton Dome – the front of the queue for Brighton SEOThe Brighton SEO conference is, I believe, the largest of its kind in the UK. We're expecting over 1,000 delegates today. I'm up immediately after the "Ask the engines" panel featuring representatives from both Google and Bing, and you can peruse my stack above on where I think the third decade of the web's development might take today's SEO practitioners.

What's the hypothesis for future vistas?

Well without web search there would be no search engine optimisation, right? (You can see why I get invited to speak at such august gatherings ... pure insight!) And yet the SEO skillset no longer needs the fuel and constant vagaries of public WWW search to keep practitioners in full employ.

SEO can be considered with ill repute when it's perceived to be about gaming (read "fooling") search engine algorithms in order to serve solely the website owner's perceived needs. However, when you view SEO skills as working in partnership with search engines to help deliver the right information to the web user at the right time in the right format, suddenly the reputation is transformed. How incredibly useful!

Moreover, we are moving beyond WWW search. All sorts of data and information and knowledge repositories are growing fast as the age of Big Data, Big Information and, hopefully, Big Knowledge dawns. Anybody with the facility to help make sense of that data, transforming data into useful information and information into knowledge, has the right skills at just the right time.

Influence: Socializing the Enterprise – my presentation at Dreamforce 2011

Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff is excited that there are 45,000 delegates registed for this week's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. It sure is one helluva a show (and I particularly appreciated the Metallica and Will.i.am gig last night!)

The theme for this year's conference is the socialization of the enterprise and the reason for my invitation to present to the Executive Summit yesterday and delegates at large today. [Disclosure: Salesforce.com is paying me to be here.]

There can be no doubt that Salesforce.com is on a mission to help its customers make the social transition with as much emphasis placed on increasing the social exchange with employees and partners as customers and prospects, and this mission entailed the acquisition of Radian6 earlier this year.

When I spoke at the Radian6 Social2011 conference in April, I felt the excitement at the opportunity to meld the Radian6 and Salesforce.com worlds, but I hadn't appreciated how fast this integration would take place. Simply gobsmacking. Read more

The Web this decade and what it means for your organisation

I'm a fortunate geek. I got to chair the 6UK launch back in November, with keynote by Vint Cerf – fondly referred to as one of the fathers of the Internet. And on Monday this week, I chaired Profiting From The New Web at the Royal Society with keynote by Sir Tim Berners-Lee – inventor of the World Wide Web. How cool is that?!

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, New Web, London, 23rd May 2011

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, New Web, London, 23rd May 2011 (courtesy Intellect)

I worked with the Web Science Trust and Intellect to design this week's conference, and we set ourselves this mission:

Discover new and better ways to do business, run our countries, and lead fulfilling and sustainable lives via the intelligent, innovative and diligent development of the New Web, and to make progress faster than otherwise.

Web Innovation

The term Web 1.0 is applied retrospectively to a Web of documents and ecommerce. The term Web 2.0 has come to describe social community and user-generated content. The New Web – the Web of Data or the Semantic Web, and sometimes Web 3.0 – entails the Web itself understanding the meaning of that participation and content.

A component of the Web of Data, known as Open Data, encompasses the idea of freeing data so that others may query it, check and challenge it, augment it, and mash it up with other sources. Sir Tim is particularly motivated by this vision given its potential to drive scientific breakthrough, enhance delivery of public services and open up new frontiers for competitive advantage. Read more

Radian6 and the Insights Platform – getting semantic

Radian6 Social2011 conferenceI'm in Boston this week for the Radian6 Social 2011 Conference. (Disclosure: Radian6 is paying my expenses to be here.) So far I've enjoyed talking with Radian6 CMO David Alston, OpenAmplify CEO Mark Redgrave, Edelman's David Armano, Dell's Head of Interactive Marketing Adam Brown, Klout Head of Platform Matthew Thomson, Marshall Sponder and Nathan Gilliatt.

Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun has kicked off the event this morning by launching the new Insights Platform, and I appreciate why Marcel is so enthusiastic about it.

Here's how Radian6 describes it:

Insights are answers. Insights give meaning to unstructured volumes of content based your needs and integrated into our current dashboard offering. Current partners include Klout, OpenAmplify and OpenCalais. The insights that each of these partners offer (like age range, location, influencer score, textual analysis) are added as drill down options on the Dashboard widgets, so you are able to take your Radian6 topic profile mentions and overlay the insight partner data all in one place. No exporting River of News and doing comparative analysis in Excel to these providers data from your separate account, now it’s all been brought together for you.

How does it work? Well Radian6 has leaned heavily on the three partners, with both OpenAmplify and OpenCalais having deep expertise in semantic technologies. This is the tech that helps interpret, understand and process the meaning of content. Serious stuff. Read more

Intro to Web 3.0 and the Internet of Things at the CIPR Social Summer session

@dewilded summed up one of the key conclusions we reached at the CIPR this evening in his tweet:

Companies thought they were laid bare by Web 2.0, they'll feel positively naked w/out reputation mgt set for RDF & the semantic web #CIPRSM [link]

My role was to act as tour guide and polemicist; to introduce the Semantic Web and the Internet of Things in just 90 minutes; and to leave the session attendees with considerable food for thought.

My slidestack is embedded here FYI, but before I sign off I should thank David Phillips (@DavidGHPhillips / http://leverwealth.blogspot.com) for his most pertinent and enthusiastic contributions to the discussion. He's a man who knows his PR and semantics for sure.

And it appears I may have achieved my objective. As @jonnystark and @Mark_Wyatt put it:

@Sheldrake thanks for the talk. Sat with @dewilded and still talking about it. [link]

@Sheldrake Many thanks for the talk yesterday. Really engaged and informative. Discussion carried on late into the night with @dewilded [link]

[Note: the video links in the presentation don't appear to be working in Firefox at the moment, but they do if you cut and paste the URLs into a browser tab. Odd. Investigating.]

The Web of data is a Web of influence

PR and Web 3.0

I'm a fan of Web 3.0. Perhaps obsessed is a more accurate description.

Web 1.0 is the Web of documents. Web 2.0 is the social and user content Web. Web 3.0 is the point at which the Web itself understands that content and social interaction. Some call it the semantic Web, and some call it the Web of data, but regardless of naming conventions, it's going to mess up a hell of a lot of business models, and create some fascinating new business and public-benefit opportunities. And it'll transform reputation management too.

If you think 'atoms of influence' trickle far and wide courtesy of human expressions and understanding with social media acting as loyal conduit, just wait until machines understand these contributions too. Read more

Friday Roundup – the Semantic Web

So-called "Web 2.0" dominated the last decade. This decade be prepared for "Web 3.0". Why the quotes?... well these terms are loosely defined at best, but remain useful as signposts of major change.

Most pundits associate 3.0 with something called the Semantic Web. Effectively, if Web 2.0 was about community and content, then Web 3.0 / the Semantic Web is about understanding the meaning of those social contributions and content.

Importantly, Web 3.0 is going to have as big an impact on what it means to practice marketing and public relations as Web 2.0. The implications are widespread and interlinked, which is not surprising when something called LinkedData is a sub-set of the Semantic Web. Read more