Semantic web, here we come [Red Herring]
A consortium of blogging startups wants to give deeper meaning to the Internet by giving people tools to categorise web pages.
A consortium of young companies declared their support this week for building categories into web sites that would make them more easily searched and combined.
The “Structured Blogging Initiative” is an attempt to jump-start the “semantic web”, the idea of giving deeper meaning to the Internet advocated by World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee. By incorporating descriptive information into the code of web pages, laypeople will be able to designate their content as a movie review, an event posting, or an item available for sale.
The idea is to spark massive amounts of web pages using these formats so that companies and applications can be formed to make use of the information; for instance, an alternative to eBay that collects listings from blogs rather than requiring sellers to sell within the confines of its marketplace.
The companies working on the initiative are Attensa, BlogAds, Bloglines, Blogdigger, Blogg.de, Blogtronix, Bloqx, Bryght, CommerceNet, Cordance, Edgeio, eTribes, Feedster, 5ive Group, FreeRange, GoingOn, Indeed.com, IntelliCal, iUpload, iVillage, KnowNow, Meetup, NetVibes, NewsGator, OpenBC, Pheedo, Pluck, PubSub Concepts, Qumana, ReadSpeaker, Reger.com, RelevantNOISE, Rojo, Socialtext, Sphere, Sxip, Tribe Networks, Verisign, Yiibu and Xanga.
