Adding meta-data to search

Fred Wilson covered an interesting search innovation by one of his portfolio companies, Indeed, in which they interpolate salaries for job postings that don't include a salary.

Fred categorizes this clever trick as adding "intelligence" to search, but it's really an example of semantic extraction combined with search. Now this is a perfect example of how aspects of the semantic web will emerge. It's shallow, but very useful, and there's no requirement for exhaustive human meta-data entry or conformity to a standard.

Attractive but flawed

The Economist chimes in on the Semantic Web as well. I quote: "It sounds a mess and it is" ... reviews of Twine "have been mixed". But of course if people are investing millions is must be a good idea, right?

Listen, the idea of a semantic web is alluring, but it's just not going to happen. We can't agree on semantics in real life except in small groups or in very shallow ways. Computers just aren't going to be any better at it until we create something smarter than ourselves. These technologies are all parlor tricks when compared to the grand vision espoused by semantic web evangelists.

I'm not saying some of the automated semantic extraction technologies are useless. Some of them are very cool, and it is absolutely the way we should be heading (waiting for humans to tag everything is a waste of time). However, we need to recognize while this path is taking us somewhere good it will ultimately fall short of the vision--much in the same way that the AI field has given us some great improvements without approaching a true artificial general intelligence.

Semantic Web Pattern

Shorter Alex Iskold:

Introduction: The Semantic Web means lots of things to lots of people, but it's important and real!

1. Top-down approaches to semantic extraction (e.g. Google) are very successful and hard to compete with, but bottom-up approaches are possible now!
   
2. RDF, Microformats, and meta-headers are used in narrow or limited applications, but we have choices!
   
3. No one has a compelling killer app for the Semantic Web, but enterprises will buy anything that sounds good!
   
4. APIs are available, so someone will build something cool any day now!
   
5. Semantic search progress is practically non-existant, but a lot of people are trying!
   
6. Since semantic search is a bust, more focused guess...I mean Semantic Extraction looks promising!
   
7. Semantic databases are not production-ready yet and don't scale, but people are really working hard on the infrastructure to be ready when they take off!
   

Conclusion: The Semantic Web was promised to be just around the corner a decade ago, but we're just in the early stages and it holds such promise and is just around the corner!

Yes, I see a pattern...