Collective Knowledge Systems: Where the Social Web Meets the Semantic Web

Proposes a class of applications called Collective Knowledge Systems, which are the “killer apps” for the integration of the Social Web (2.0) and the Semantic Web. Characteristics of these systems, principles, and examples from real applications are included.

Original abstract: What can happen if we combine the best ideas from the Social Web and Semantic Web?  The Social Web is an ecosystem of participation, where value is created by the aggregation of many individual user contributions.  The Semantic Web is an ecosystem of data, where value is created by the integration of structured data from many sources.  What applications can best synthesize the strengths of these two approaches, to create a new level of value that is both rich with human participation and powered by well-structured information?  This paper proposes a class of applications called collective knowledge systems, which unlock the “collective intelligence” of the Social Web with knowledge representation and reasoning techniques of the Semantic Web.

See Also:

• Where the Social Web Meets the Semantic Web, keynote at the 2006 Semantic Web conference (slides and video)
• RealTravel – a social knowledge sharing site
• Avoiding the Travesty of the Commons, a talk on the design of social knowledge sharing sites