Motivation for applying Semantic Web technologies to the Social Web

Abstract

Many will have become familiar with popular Social Web applications such as blogging, social networks and wikis, and will be aware that we are heading towards an interconnected information space (through the blogosphere, inter-wiki links, mashups, etc.). At the same time, these applications are experiencing boundaries in terms of information integration, dissemination, reuse, portability, searchability, automation and more demanding tasks like querying. The Semantic Web is increasingly aiming at these applications areas - quite a number of Semantic Web approaches have appeared in recent years to overcome the boundaries in these application areas, e.g. semantic wikis (Semantic MediaWiki), knowledge networking (Twine), embedded microcontent detection and reuse (Operator, Headup, Semantic Radar), social graph and data portability APIs (from Google and Facebook), etc.