It’s not about the technology. The most important arguments to advance concern value. Be clear about who benefits and what s/he cares about. The good news is that there are plenty of examples that can be cited, and it is possible to differentiate the web 3.0 value proposition.

The Semantic Web is based on an “Open World” model. This means that that there may always be more information that is currently unknown, and that all Semantic Web systems must be able to accept any new information, no matter the form. New information may be basic data: eg. the new books a user just bought; or it may be data describing the structure of other data: eg. I want the system to recognise the Chinese form of a person’s name, as well as the English form. In the latter example, the Chinese forms of a name may well have been in the system already, but not being used in automated operations.

Not only does the Semantic Web accept all new information, but importantly, it does not require any specific information. For instance, I may stipulate that all people must have a first name, but the system must be capable of working with people who’s first names have not been revealed.

So while the Semantic Web provides the capability of describing (via ontologies) the data you may have, it requires nothing of you beyond basic consistency. This allows you to have as large or as small an ontology as you want. You can then choose only to use data that fits the ontology neatly, or use data that occurs mostly outside of the ontology.

How does this work with Web 2.0? RDF is a mechanism for linking information together. It lets you form a “Web” linking anything, including people, communities, documents, relationships, and web pages. This is the perfect foundation for any kind of web! RDF also lets you grow your system continuously. OWL then allows you to describe those portions of the new web that you understand and recognise, enabling intelligent automation on that part of the data. If everything is being done by people (such as on a purely social network) then perhaps there is no need for automation. If you want to do it all by computer, then it becomes worthwhile to use OWL extensively. But at no stage are requirements forced on users.

The Semantic Web enables, it should never enforce nor impede. Web 2.0 applications can only benefit from the functionality derived from using Semantic Web technologies.