Squio.blog

Freebase as productive playgound?

Some time ago I revisited the subject of tagging vs the Semantic Web, focused on personal data use: Making Sense of Tagging.

My conclusion was that, in order to make semantic tagging effective, the interface must be as simple as possible, while still providing linkage with the real world outside. I other words: as simple as traditional tagging (del.icio.us, flickr) but anchored to some broader defined ontology. Which can be anything you agree upon.

In the mean time, Freebase has entered privite beta testing, and the reviews are raving (Esther Dyson, Tim O’Reilly)…

Now Jon Udell added his view in Semantic web as social enjoyment.

One sentence strikes me as the essence of what is needed for the semweb:

The authors of the semantic web are going to be people, not machines. And people will only want to play the game if it’s easy, natural, and fun.

The essence is the bottom-up approach. End users “doing the work”, both for fun and for their own benefit. Food for explorative and enquiring minds (which we all have), nothing like being forced to use a top-down, pre-defined hierarchy.

Man, I would really like to play around with Freebase (trade an invite for a Joost token, once these become available again?).