The Semantics Web: Better Information and Interactions Through Artificial Intelligence
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Just when you were getting comfortable with Web 2.0, it’s time to start thinking about Web 3.0. But don’t fret: the geeks and the gurus began shaping Web 3.0 ten years ago, when Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who is largely credited with inventing the World Wide Web, envisioned what he called a semantic web, in which computers didn’t merely present or work with data, they understood it, as well.
Think of it as a computer able to read a document for context: the ability to realize a document that includes the word “teeth” is a document about human teeth, not the teeth of a gear or the teeth of a shark. Think of it as a way to contextualize information, so that information merely doesn’t exist in a binary manner—it exists in context to some grander theme. Think of it as the ability to find that one tiny needle in the biggest haystack you can imagine.
Perhaps now you can understand why Web 3.0 is going to be an incredible boon for internet marketers. By giving marketers the tools to not only pinpoint, say, keywords, but tools that are able to target those keywords even better via semantics, contextual advertising will be transformed in ways that serve both marketers and consumers better. Marketers will be able to save money by better targeting their online advertising, and consumers will receive better, more meaningful advertising from merchants with whom they want to do business.
The key to all this, of course, is the technology that enables computers to comprehend. Already, companies like Peer39 are developing algorithms to understand web page meaning and sentiment. MIT’s Technology Review named the company as one of the ten web startups to watch in 2008.




