Two questions that I get asked every now and then are:
- “Why does Social Networking matter?”
- “Why does the Semantic Web matter?”
I’ll attempt to answer in as few words as possible, but giving enough meaning.
Why the Social Web matters
The Social Web (or Social Networking) matters because it allows people to communicate where it has not been possible before. It allows a breakdown of situations that act as a barrier in the physical world, these include differences and similarities in:
- location
- government
- culture
- religion
- psychology
- age
For example. I live in England, I might want to travel to Mexico (for example). Lets find some people in Mexico that share similar interests as I do in Mexico, I can then meet up with them if I choose to, or just get some advice about where to go or where not to go in Mexico. I can do so using a Social Networking System.
Another example. I might not be able to travel to certain places around the world, e.g. at the moment I wouldn’t be able to go to Kenya or some countries in the Middle East. I still want to learn about them. I can do so using a Social Networking system.
One very good point was made by Dan Brickley in his blog post titled “Open Social Networks:bring back Iran“. He mentions that the people of Iran were cut off of Social Networking Systems because of censorship, and he continues by saying that it was a good chance to create relationships of young people across nations. Check out the post, it contains a lot of good information that people should take notice of.
To take things further, Loic Le Meur of Seesmic has recently documented about the desire to connect with people around the world to find out more about various countries and cultures. This was in his blog post titled “Critter needs you at Seesmic World Project“. The Seesmic World Project is available online now.
Why the Semantic Web matters
I feel like I have answered this question so many times, but I feel like 2008 will definitely see more and more people taking up more of a SemWeb stance.
The Semantic Web matters because it provides meaning to your data. Its simple as that. The only thing you should worry about is if your information is meaningful.
But a few things should be highlighted:
- An object oriented view of data: everything in the world is an object, no matter how abstract, large or atomic
- Link data together: in reality objects are linked together, not only this but by linking together objects with a labelled link provides more meaning = “Linked Data“
The two bullet points above combine to form The Data Web.
If you have your data in a good format, then you can take it anywhere. This is Data Portability, and this is the reason why Semantic Web technologies have made their way onto the stack at DataPortability.org.
Privacy and Trust
Of course there are privacy and trust issues when Opening up data, but these are being addressed as well, blog posts:
- ”Top 3 Privacy Issues for DataPortability on Social Networks“
- “<a href="https://blogs.