Re: Test of Independent Invention: RDF

On 29 April 2015 at 03:11, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org> wrote:

> Not convinced. From my conversations with engineers there like Mischa
> Tuffield, I believe the answer is "yes" it could have been done
> without the Semantic Web and *the part of the company Experian
> bought*, i.e. the honeypot for identity fraud,  the main part of the
> business was done out without RDF. Thus, Experian is not maintaining
> the RDF infrastructure (at least 4store).
>
> So, I still haven't seen RDF used in any start-ups that have succeeded
> yet. I suspect there is probably some ones that *will* succeed in the
> healthcare space. However, in general there are major flaws in the
> entire Semantic Web concept ("follow your nose" URIs lead to
> accidental denial of service attacks, basic CS tells us graphs will
> always be slower than hash tables, etc.) that will likely prevent it
> from ever occupying the place XML or JSON has IMHO. That being said,
> it will likely to continue to be useful in niche markets involving
> data merger with dynamic schemas
>
> And as a source of academic papers :)
>

I find this discussion interesting and it lead me to an interesting
discovery.

What qualities make semantic web apps or startups valuable.  I thought for
quite a while about this, and could not work it out.  But then it struck me
and it's so blindingly obvious.

Users.

I know of only two "startups" that made apps that both the semantic web and
users.  Garlik and OpenLink.  Both became million dollar companies.  I'll
give a shout out to facebook which also serves their users using RDF and
turtle, indeed with the best practice of using # URIs.

I cant think of any other startups that use the semantic web for users.

My prediction is that the next generation of startups that include users
based on the semantic web are going to be highly profitable.

I'll also bet a beer that at least one of these companies (but I suspect
over a dozen) will make it to $100 million+ in the next 5 years.  Any
takers?


>
>
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Bob DuCharme <bob@snee.com> wrote:
> > I never said that they were purchased "due to RDF." Sampo asked about "a
> > company or consortium out there which has made 1-10 million bucks
> applying
> > technology, which couldn't have been without the Semantic Web." Garlik
> > applied this technology and made a million bucks, so they were an obvious
> > answer to Sampo's question.
> >
> > Could they have done it without RDF technology? See what their CTO Steve
> > Harris said at
> >
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9159168/triple-stores-vs-relational-databases
> .
> >
> > Bob
> >
> >
> >
> > On 4/28/2015 5:51 PM, Harry Halpin wrote:
> >
> > On Apr 28, 2015 9:59 AM, "Bob DuCharme" <bob@snee.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 4/27/2015 5:08 PM, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
> >>>
> >>> All of this Semantic Web stuff has existed for a while now. One would
> >>> expect that there is a company or consortium out there which has made
> 1-10
> >>> million bucks applying technology, which couldn't have been without the
> >>> Semantic Web.
> >>
> >>
> >> If you're looking for a dramatic success story in which one company is
> >> 100% about semantic web technology and then makes a million dollars,
> here's
> >> one: http://www.dataversity.net/experian-acquires-garlik-ltd/
> >>
> >
> > Bob, they were not purchased due to RDF. Their triplestore and use of RDF
> > was at best support for their main project  They were purchased because
> they
> > would use honeypots to identify identity fraud. It's possible they used
> RDF
> > to help combat identity fraud, but they were not purchased because of
> RDF.
> > That's like saying a social networking company was purchased because they
> > were using this thing called a SQL database :)
> >
> > That being said, there's more investment in RDF than there used to be.
> Has
> > the technology hit a home-run like XML and taken over the industry?
> >
> > The honest answer is "no, not yet." And XML is rapidly being eroded by
> JSON
> > and Javascript. Who knows what will be next?
> >
> >    cheers,
> >          harry
> >
> >
> >
> >> Companies such as TopQuadrant, Franz, and Cambridge Semantics are doing
> >> just fine, and more importantly, their customers are doing quite well
> using
> >> this technology. I think the more interesting thing to look at is the
> number
> >> of well-known companies that while not devoting themselves 100% to this
> >> technology, are still getting more and more work done with it:
> >> http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/2014/05/experience-in-sparql-a-plus.html
> >>
> >> It's been interesting to see different divisions of Bloomberg joining
> >> these ranks lately.
> >>
> >> Bob DuCharme
> >> @bobdc
> >> snee.com/bobdc.blog
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>