Image by Tracy O via Flickr

(by Frank van Harmelen)

Besides a number of technical challenges to be solved before the Semantic Web is ready for prime time (my current top list is: scalability, heterogeneity, trust/provenance), there is also a crucial non-technical issue to be tackled: what are good business models for the Web of Data? Just as people were struggling with thinking up new business models in the early days of the Web, so people are now struggling to do the same for the Web of Data. And for this, we don’t need computer scientists, we need business guys, economists, marketing people, etc. One of the leading activists/thinkers in this space is Paul Miller (until recently at Talis, heading the Semantic Web Gang), but even his posts (e.g here) and posts from the Semantic Web Company in Vienna (here and here) show that thee is still a lot of work to be done…