Semantic Web: What Is The Killer App?
The Semantic Web has been in the making for some time and people think it is nearing maturity.
We have written about this trend extensively, with our two most notable
posts being an analysis of the challenges of the classic bottom-up approach and the promise of the new top-down
one. Regardless of how the Semantic Web will come about, for it to
flourish
it needs to hit the mainstream. There is no way that consumers will
appreciate the elegance and mathematical soundness of RDF and OWL.
People don't care about math, they care about utility and even more,
about fun. What the Semantic Web needs, then, is a killer app.
Whatever it is, it needs to layer an understanding of semantics on top of a consumer application. The consumer application needs to be so cool and so viral that people will be open to learning that it is powered by semantic technologies. In that case, it will be possible to further market applications as Semantic Web apps. Consumers will understand that if one Semantic Web application has potential, so might others. In math, this is called proof by induction. In marketing this is called creating a market. In any case, it needs to be done.
In this post, we analyze several existing and potential applications of semantic technologies and look for the killer app.
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