(Original post taken from “About the Social Semantic Web“)

A lot of activities around Linking Open Data (“LOD”) and the associated data sets which are nicely visualised as a “cloud” are going on for quite a while now. It is exciting to see how the rather academic “Semantic Web” and all the work which is associated with this disruptive technology can be transformed now into real business use cases.

What I have observed in the last few months, especially in business communities, is the following:

• “Linked Data” sounds interesting for the business people because the phrase creates a lot of associations in a second or two; also the database crowd seems to be attracted by this web-based approach of data integration


• “Web of Data” is somehow misleading because many people think that this will be a new web which replaces something else. Same story with the “Semantic Web”


• “Linking Open Data” sounds dangerous and not trustworthy to many companies

For insiders it is clear, that the “openness” of data, especially in commercial settings, can be controlled and has to be contr