Re: Schema.org

Thank you Adam for elaborating on this aspect that is at the core of this issue!

A year ago we had a few lively discussions on this list about online publishers of prized information, namely (academic) publishers of scientific and commercial publications.

Where will the big search engines define and place the boundaries for intellectual property for themselves and their corporate clients?

The issue of "legacy/outdated/anachronistic"data silos underscores the need to come up with a workable solution for adding semantics without new proprietary domains of 'public information" being created for commercial use.

Information space, the Internet and public domain are often interchangeable concepts if we consider the open access associated with them.

But search engines companies typically do not share their prized possessions with us, i.e. their algorithms and we, the end-users are thus already at a disadvantage.

Will their endeavors truly favor the semantic web or merely create tools for maximizing the financial benefits for their search engines in the new era?

Milton Ponson
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Project Paradigm: A structured approach to bringing the tools for sustainable development to all stakeholders worldwide by creating ICT tools for NGOs worldwide and: providing online access to web sites and repositories of data and information for sustainable development

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--- On Fri, 6/3/11, adasal <adam.saltiel@gmail.com> wrote:

From: adasal <adam.saltiel@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Schema.org
To: "Juan Sequeda" <juanfederico@gmail.com>
Cc: "Semantic Web" <semantic-web@w3.org>
Date: Friday, June 3, 2011, 5:37 PM

I worked for Yell.com at Yell Labs.
Yell are a sunset tech industry. They have a large investment in existing IT structure which was built to ensure a book could be produced canonical for the years listing.
What they are left with is a sales force (largely commission based) that scour the country for very small business to renew or add to the directory - often with on line presence including SEO, as inducement.

But they have been largely disintermediated by current technology and the expectations that search and social media give rise to.
The value of a canonical listing no longer exists - what is valuable is findability which is what search engines provide.

Yell were not in the least interested in a semantic approach.
They seem to want to possess a data silo that they can charge entry/exit to in somehow.
But this highlights the underlying conflict in this way:-
When I create a web site for my tiny business, even where I follow the format in schema.org, surely I own that data? But I want a search engine to index me for free, gaining its revenue through other means.

Now the way the search engine company will gain its revenue will be by examining my business plus searches, that is use information about my business to enhance the profile it creates of people who make searches in which my business appears as a result.

They may try to sell this avenue to advertising to me or to someone else, or both.
Now the conflict is that actually that information could be very valuable to me, but it is not freely available at all.
While I think that Yell is disintermediated and that they cannot produce the volume of searches through their own properties to produce this valuable secondary data, it also remains that the secondary data is an artifact of large search or usage volumes.

Conceivably the public have an interest in this data, or some aspects of it. It is here that I think a potential conflict exists.

Adam


On 3 June 2011 14:14, Juan Sequeda <juanfederico@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,
I'm surprised nobody has started the discussion on the gran announcement of Google, Yahoo and Bing on schema.org

What do you all think? Is this a step forward or a step backwards? 


Is this "the best news I have heard in years regarding the structured Web, RDF, and the semantic Web" [1] or not?



Looking forward to this discussion!
[1] http://www.mkbergman.com/962/structured-web-gets-massive-boost/



Juan Sequeda
+1-575-SEQ-UEDA
www.juansequeda.com