netactr

Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web inventor, threw his weight behind the semantic web and “mega-mash-ups”. “In the semantic web, it’s like every piece of data is given a longitude and latitude on a map, and anyone can ‘mash’ them together and use them for different things”, Bernes-Lee said in an interview with Times Online. I agree with the general direction of his thinking, but some works remains to be done before this becomes a reality. In such a semantic web people and data have to be efficiently identifiable and accessible while still providing for privacy. This presumes a sophisticated data key management technology. URLs have long been used to link to web-based data, and the Open Social standard is the first step towards a person identity solution. Marketing applications for semantic webs could range from syndicating content across sites to more narrowly targeting visitors based on their social networks.