The semantic web — if that phrase doesn’t mean anything to you yet, don’t worry. Pretty soon it will be as commonplace as its close cousin – the ‘social web.’ It’s basically a fancy term for the idea of linking all the web’s data to create all kinds of relationships between people, products, sites and more. At its most basic level, it means creating a common language to allow all the individual elements of the internet to communicate and connect. By also making that language more human meaningful, developers can use semantic web principles to put out applications that are better able to comprehend and complement the core structures of our society.
Have you ever used Facebook Connect? Searched for something on Google? Bought a product through an Amazon affiliate link? Any time you do any of these things — and countless more on the big ol’ interwebs — you’re reaping the benefits of the semantic web. In fact, some of the most exciting and innovative stuff happening on today’s internet is based on this concept. Which is why it’s fitting that for many people, ‘semantic web’ is becoming synonymous with ‘Web 3.0.’
Want to learn more? Check out Mediabistro’s Web 3.0 Conference in Santa Clara next week. With speakers like Microsoft’s Mark Johnson and Scott Prevost, Google’s Johanna Wright and Vulcan Inc.’s Mark Greaves, the conference is already shaping up to be a great resource for anyone interested in learning more about the next big movement on the web. Plus, GIT members will save 20% on tickets with code: W3GIT.
What: Mediabistro’s Web 3.0 Conference
Where: Hyatt Regency Santa Clara
5101 Great America Parkway,
Santa Clara, California, USA 95054
When: January 26-27, 2010
We’ve come a long way since the days of web 1.0 – we’ve gone from Geocities to geotagging, dial up to DSL, talking to Tweeting. Where once there was only C++ and HTML, wikipedia now lists an entire 
