Does Facebook Really Want a Semantic Web? Two weeks ago, Facebook has announced a major new initiative called Facebook Open Graph. This is an attempt to not only re-imagine Facebook, but in a lot of ways, an attempt to re-define how the Web works. We wrote in details about the implications of this move for all interested parties. A big part of the announcement is Facebook's vision of a consumer Semantic Web. In this new world, publishers have an incentive to annotate pages by marking up activities, events, people, movies, books, music and more. The proper markup, would in turn, lead to a much more interconnected Web - people would be connected with each other across websites and around the things they are interested in. Directionally, this vision is both correct and important. "Instead, it appears that semantics is an afterthought in the race to capture user identity and information, in exchange for sending publishers the traffic.
" Concerns with Open Graph Protocol Both of these shortcomings are easy to correct. Rishad Tobaccowala: @jeffjarvis you are right. Swom ™: RT @jeffjarvis: Identity s... Bizarro identity « BuzzMachine. I’m still trying to get my head around Facebook’s moves to become the king of identity online. Hell, if Leo Laporte couldn’t quite figure it out on yesterday’s taping of This Week in Google, then I’m not capable. But here’s where I am. Help me advance this…. I think my problem is this: I want the exact opposite of what Facebook did. I want the Bizarro Facebook. When I tweeted that, ad man Rishad Tobaccowala tweeted: “you are right.
My identity already exists online. What’s needed versus the present? Fine. But in the process, Facebook controls our identities with no relationship to our true identities online — that list above from email addresses to blogs to photos. Far better and more experienced minds than mine are trying to get their heads around this. So perhaps there’s a compromise? Right. But as Swom_Network tweeted as I was tweeting about all this today, “Yep. but who is to do it?” That’s really the question. Or that’s what I think I think. What could Google do about that? Rishad Tobaccowala: When it is so easy to "lik...