RE:The Mega Meta Opportunity (and Google buys Metaweb)

Well, less than 24 hours after I posted The Mega Meta Opportunity, Google announced their acquisition of Metaweb. Normally this is where I would insert some smirky comment like “damn I’m good”. But admittedly I’d never heard of Metaweb and just got lucky on the timing of the announcement. Instead, I’ll be grateful to Google for underscoring my point, and it also gives me a chance to clarify a question that Jason posted yesterday:

Not sure I understand the analogy. Are you talking about adding the metadata at the individual level, or using that to generate metadata at a macro level?

Here’s a quote from the Google blog that I think captures what I was trying to say

…we’re just beginning to apply our understanding of the web to make search better. Type [barack obama birthday] in the search box and see the answer right at the top of the page. Or search for [events in San Jose] and see a list of specific events and dates. We can offer this kind of experience because we understand facts about real people and real events out in the world.

The key phrase there is that they “understand facts about real people and real events out in the real world.” My analogy with the digital camera photo was basically asserting that every record of data in the universe should get tagged with basic entity descriptions such as (in the case of Tweets): who sent the tweet, what or who its about, etc. Ellerdale is an example of a company that’s doing this well today. When this data gets rolled-up we can then generate macro level meta descriptions that describe things like trends and attributes that you need more than one metatag to discern. As example, based on my tweet history you could probably “tag” me with something like “High positive sentiment about Chicago”, or “Call Center Exec” <—Huge marketing opportunities here. Now think about applying this idea to data that resides inside the enterprise…

Consequently, Metaweb has a 3:30 minute video clip on their site that lays the foundation for this well. While companies like Metaweb (now Google) and Ellerdale are beginning to scratch the surface of this, I’ll state again that the opportunities here are ENORMOUS and go well beyond just search.