As I grow in my understanding of the Semantic Web, it occurs to me that there are two camps aiming at the same goal - an improved, highly-relevant Web experience for us all. One camp, Developers, consists of those who are really going to make it happen - architects. They are participating in the development of standards for Web 3.0. They are determining how Web components (pages, content within pages, images, etc.) will be classified so that content can be quickly assimilated with meaning. There is much work to be done...

Another camp, Entrepreneurs, has companies like Radar Networks with Twine (private beta) , Enth (semantic search engine), and our favorite - Semanticator™ (semantic marketing technology made by us - ThoughtLava). A friend of mine, Eric Hoffer with Second Integral (semantic Web expert - blog), said something to me the other day, "...some of the smartest people become their own bottleneck..." What I think he was saying is that Camp Developer may have difficulty bringing the promise of the Semantic Web to the masses. If that was his point, I think it is the job of Camp Entrepreneur to take hold of what we can and begin delivering it to the people. It may be imperfect from a standards perspective (as they aren't fully evolved yet), but it will get everything flowing in the right direction. Camp Entrepreneur may catalyze adoption as Camp Developer makes the reality more universally available.

As a result of this epiphany, I have started a new Google Group to facilitate discussion on the topic of Semantic Marketing. Please join me in bringing it to life.

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