Following both DEMO and TC50 the past week, there has certainly been no shortage of startup energy about the blogosphere. TC50′s winner, Yammer, has made an appearance in just about every techblog, some with mixed reviews. Essentially a Twitter set up for the enterprise (it’s a locked-down version of micro-blogging) it feels, instinctively, like a step away from open, linked data and a vibrant web-space. I don’t know that much about it, however, so I’d be happy for someone to explain its benefits to the enterprise and the web itself.

Much more exciting to me, was the launch of fotonauts at TC50 (No, I wasn’t there, but there is a brilliant summary here). The premise is to manage photographs in a much more linked way. The service can take information from Google Maps, Wikipedia and other sources and mash them up with your photos—or, apparently, photos from other usable sources like flickr. These photos are then published with all the extracted metadata to a website without you having to do any of the scraping yourself. I’ve signed up for a beta, but it’s not open yet, so watch this space! (And, fotonauts, if you’re watching: “fill this space!”)

At Demofall, (again online, rather than physically at the conference), I noticed the appearance of Data Essence.  Data Essence, from what I’ve read, is looking to accurately match investors with potential opportunities through semantic web analysis of websites. Although they seem to be aiming in a Semantic Web direction, they’re not hanging about waiting for a revolution. One quote from Amnon Mishor—Data Essence CEO and co-founder—I thought particularly interesting was:

“Clever semantic tagging cannot stand for itself,” Misher said. “There is a need for sophisticated algorithms that utilize the semantic data to intelligently hand pick information tailored to match the users’ interests and profile. Without this ability, any natural language  solution or semantic database will become a not so useful utility, and will not really solve the problem of information overflow.”

hmmm… That sounds like a conversation in itself. What algorithms are necessary, and what applications do you see being/needing developing NEXT. What are the blockers? I’d be particularly interested to hear what other startups and news events you’ve seen lately. Also, what you think of what these Startups mean for Semantic Web technologist (both established and emerging).

Right, I’m running out of HotSpot credit, and I’m loath to pay a well-known mobile broadband supplier any more, so I’ll end there. Over-arching message of this post? Lots of startups, some of them catching media attention (and I don’t know why?), others seem to be sleeping potential giant-killers. Lots of “calls to arms”… what do you see?