There are some amazing offerings to the consumer that come packaged with the next generation of web technology:
- A Semantic Desktop, for intuitive file organization
- Cloud computing means access to your files anywhere, anytime
- OpenID means not having to juggle multiple username/passwords
It’s a personal digital assistant for your personal digital life. It knows about you… your passwords, your interests, your files, and what you don’t even realize you are looking for. This personal data will become more cataloged, more collected, easier to access.
The question is… if it is so easy for me to access, who else can access my digital life?
Over the next week, I am going to be looking at how the next generation web will change the way you connect, discover, and share with the social online world. I’m also going to be looking at how this movement is going to make marketing more relevant and measurable.

SEMANTIC WEB: THE PRIVACY THREAT

“Web 3.0 is the Web of Openness. A web that breaks the old siloes, links everyone everything everywhere, and makes the whole thing potentially smarter.”
Greg Boutin

With Data Portability and OpenID, there has been a lot of buzz around “open”. But open to who? Do I really want all of my data in one place? Won’t that make it easier to steal? The themes of identity theft, stalking, paranoia, and general fear of people knowing too much about you have permeated the conversation. The Beacon backlash shows that people might not want others to know what they are buying. Open is often seen as the opposite of private.
But not all of us care about privacy. Some of us flourish in the openness of modern conversation. Aren’t we all just a little too “buttoned up”? Then again, with a good number of employers looking at your social media profiles, there has to be some balance.
What about those party photos on Flickr? What about that loudmouth friend of yours that makes NSFW comments on your Facebook? What about those occassional dweets (Twittering while intoxicated)? Don’t worry, for tomorrow they will disappear… lost in the stream of content. We get away with a lot more in the safety of the social noise; what happens when it’s gone?
In the next generation of the web, there will be more content… there will be more information about you available… and it will be more findable!! But, you will also have better control.
SEMANTIC WEB: THE PRIVACY SOLUTION
In a recent interview with Chad Stoller, current VP of Marketing at Drop.io and former Executive Director of our Emerging Platforms at Organic, he stated “The new cost isn’t publicity, it’s privacy.” But how valuable are the privacy solutions we have now?
Look at MySpace. I can hide my entire profile, I can hide my pictures, and I can hide my birthday. The options aren’t much more diverse from there. What about allowing the friends of my friends to see pictures, but not a stranger? What about hiding photos of my children, but not photos of my vacation?
More understanding and relevance around our data, our profiles, and our connections will enable better options for privacy.
Imagine a Flickr privacy based on tags… actually imagine something even smarter, where the names of your children, “child”, “kid” are all synonymous and able to be automatically tied together under a privacy setting. Imagine a permission system that isn’t just “on” and “off”, but is based on the relationships and interests you have with the people trying to access your content. Imagine a publishing model that only pushes your new content to the people who want to see it, the people that should see it.
When we talk about a web driven by artificial intelligence, it is important that we move away from HAL 9000. The semantic web will not only be smart, it will also be more human.
So we have heard a lot about the consumer benefit, but what about those of us in the marketing industry? How is this movement is going to increase the relevance of ads and make social media measurement easier?
Marta Strickland