Goog-book???

In our last post, we introduced our philosophy of viewing the web and related technologies, and outlined the iterations of the web in terms of 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Our contention is that there is no clear definition of what web 3.0 is exactly. This post is the first in a series that describes some of the technologies and features that are seen as being part of web 3.0. In our journey towards a clearer position on 3.0, let’s talk about “semantic web.”

Semantic web according to the web inventor Tim Berners-Lee:

 “will bring structure to the meaningful content of web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.”

What does this mean in the real world for businesses and consumers? To demonstrate the idea of semantic web in a business application, let’s see how Facebook used this concept to create a genius idea, which is called the Facebook Graph Search. It is a semantic web engine that is designed to give answers to users queries rather than a list of links.

Graph Search operates by use of a search algorithm similar to traditional search engines such as Google. However, the search is based on intended meaning, which is a feature of the semantic search engine. Rather than returning results based on matching keywords, the search engine is designed to match phrases, as well as objects on the site.

Facebook supports searches for the following types of

·       Places

·       Check-ins of the user, friends, or where user or friends have been tagged

·       Objects with location information attached. In addition, the returned objects will be those in which the user or friends have been tagged, or those objects that were created by the user or friends.

Users can filter results, such as in time (since and until), or search only a given user's News feed.

The feature also allows users to search the web directly. [1]

You can watch the video below to see how Facebook graph bar works:

Facebook Graph bar is only one of many of the applications that use the semantic web technology and in our blog you will see further examples and analysis and how deep the field of the web is.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Graph_Search