Let me make it concise. Chief Scientist of Powerset, Ron Kaplan, went to Columbia to give a talk today. I also got a chance to chat with him privately. I was impressed by their technology (I would not go into detail here). Semantic Web is not tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, it is today, it is now...
The rise of social networking, or the so-called Web 2.0 took off at around 2003, and takes five years to mature. Though there are still a lot of things to figure out, but players are established.
Semantic Web in 2008 is like Web 2.0 in 2002 - Products are launching, people are talking and exploring. If Web 2.0's pattern continue to hold, Semantic Web will mature in four - five years. 2012, that is probably the year when everything gets set up, and shuts the door for new entrants.
China is usually two to three years later than US. E.g., Baidu was founded in 2000, while Google was in 1998, and some other search players in US were even earlier. However, the competition is different today. Internet makes information flow much much faster. Within the next two years, I believe there would be companies in China starting to work on Semantic technologies. Few people in China today study serious Natural Language Processing, which is exactly like Information Retrieval (What search technology is called in computer science) was a few years ago. But a lot more people are monitoring the internet industry.
I am excited. I am nervous. Another war in the Internet is starting... There is also gonna be a battle ground in China. And this time, it will be a lot more intense. What will happen?? What should we do??
If you are interested in the whole spectrum of "Semantic Web", check out Spivack Nova, the CEO of Radar Network's blog.
Also check out Powerset's beta.
