The Biz of Coding

So, What the Hell is Semantic Web or Web 3.0?

by Ujwal Tickoo on November 21st, 2009

I agree the word “Semantic” is dense, opaque. Semantic = related to meaning — that doesn’t tell much. I agree the name “Semantic Web” is not self-explanatory. Then was Web 2.0 any more friendly a name?

Ok so what does Semantic Web mean for you? A product manager or a marketer or a lay internet user interested to learn more. Fine. Here it is, but first just a few moments to agree on two definitions — Web 1 and 2.

Web 1.0 — the www of connected documents via hyperlinks. Its the Web of Documents.

Web 2.0 – the participatory web. Here people collaborate, write comments. Its bigger than documents its about human participation. Further, Web Applications called Mashups exist to suck data from other Web Sites / Data Stores / Applications (all those who are willing to share that data). Mashups collect data from multiple sources and bring up a new representation. E.g. show Rental Properties on Google Maps.

See, Web 3.0 also called Semantic Web is the Web of Data. We had the Web of documents. Now the Web of Data. Insightful? Lets take a couple of scenarios.

Scenario 1: Lets say you want to add same friends on LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace — all you should need is a single address book and add all people to multiple web applications. Today its not that easy. Why? Because if you have friends on LinkedIn that Friends list is controlled by the LinkedIn Web Application. Facebook is a different Web Application. But you ask with irritation — the Address Book is “your data”. You should own it not applications. Well the ability of your address book or other data being easy to connect and use across applications would be the work of Web of Data. Though several Web 2.0 apps do this now — the magical work of standardization of data exchange mechanisms will be in the domain of Web 3.0. Read about RDF if you would like to know more.

Scenario 2: Another example would be you have photos (which are typically time-stamped by digital cameras today) and you have a calendar application. Could the calendar application show you photos by date — thereby giving you a brief life history?

This should get you started. To understand more do read this excellent presentation/tutorial on Semantic Web by Ivan Herman. This is the only tutorial you need to read to get a solid start.

To summarize. Web 1.0 allows you to create a web page, which has a hyperlink (a URL). You can connect pages by using the URLs. Web 3.0 will allow you to connect data via their URI’s and do much more. It is therefore the advent of the Web of Data.

Much work on Web 3.0 has already been done. See the link W3C site on Semantic Web to know more.

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