Marketing is both good and bad in that it can inform or it can misinform. Part of my job is to help clients understand what is real and what is not. And yes, also what is important and what is not which I base on what my research tells me has impact and enterprise value. I’m not saying that semantic technologies are not important. I am saying that they are not Web 3.0. Not yet at least. Of course semantic web needs marketing but misinforming people that the semantic web is Web 3.0 is not the answer.

Your philosophical positioning on memes and their existence (or lack thereof) proves my point that to focus on defining Web 3.0 is a distraction from what is currently real.

“Who is the “semantic web community”? Pray define more concretely. ” If we avoid both the amorphous side of “what is anything really” and the overly specific (naming everyone in the semantic web community) it is pretty easy to define the community as “those with the desire and agenda to promote the advancement of the semantic web.” Hey, that was pretty easy. BTW, since you define yourself as a “Semantic/Intelligent Web nutcase” http://www.linkedin.com/in/dangrig that would qualify you as part of the community

Just because you don’t like or recognize my arguments doesn’t mean they lack validity. However, you did give me the incentive to elaborate.

Finally, I should point out to readers that you are the founder of a semantic web related company and have a vested interest in its marketing as Web 3.0.

1. “Web 3.0 Doesn’t Exist” – nor does “Web 2.0″, for that matter, nor does “cyberspace”, any other Internet memes, or any other abstract concepts for that matter. Without going too philosophical here, but let’s ask ourselves a Quine-ian question: what “does” exist? Any physical object does, but do any abstract concepts (whether marketing or pop culture originated)? That’s why this isn’t a good argument, to me.

2. But let’s assume only “web 3.0″ doesn’t exist, and the rest of the memes out there do exist: while this may be “purely a marketing move”, I don’t see what’s wrong with marketing? Please don’t tell me there is, because Gartner itself is functioning by pumping its own marketing hype machine. And I really haven’t seen a great technology and/or business built on it being successful without the need for marketing.

3. Who is the “semantic web community”? Pray define more concretely. My hunch is that after a few attempts (e.g., only the old KR folks out of Bell Labs? maybe only the Time Berners Lee/W3C followers/sect? or perhaps both of the above put together? Or maybe a pretty successful company such as Zemanta, would they qualify too?). Point is: “semantic web community” per se “doesn’t exist”. “semantic web” itself doesn’t exist, but only semantic technologies.

4. I believe there is a need for marketing of semantic technologies; I’ve written my arguments down before, here: http://www.semanticweb.com/insight/article.php/3753486/Where-is-the-Semantic-Web-Killer-App-Part-1.htm. I won’t repeat but bottom line: even though semantic technologies are good, have been in place before “Web 2.0″ has existed as a meme, semantic applications in business success has escaped for just as long as “semantic technologies” have existed. Why? Because technologists aren’t marketers or business people. Which is why when one hears about “semantic technologies” eyes (audience, users, VC, etc) tend to get sleepy, boredom tends to set in. Because there is something underlying semantic technologies (data openness, interoperability, etc.) that goes beyond or differently than “Web 2.0″ (which does exist): and that is the ability to decouple data from its containers (on the Internet, most likely web content). Is that a “web 2.0″ thing? to a certain extent, but “Web 2.0″, SOA, etc. simply open up APIs to even be able to do any sort of processing and joining of disparate data. Only the beginning. And the process is fairly artisan-like, definitely not easy, because there are not abstracted layers from an individual API to another. So developers need to knit code that is too hard coded, rather than abstracted. The latter is more of a “semantic thing” than a “2.0″ thing.

5. Your arguments about “let’s not be distracted” etc. sounds very Fidel: pretty totalitarian. I wonder who decides what’s important and “we” should be focused on.

6. What I am expecting typically from any such strong opinions (if they are to be more than opinions) are some validation of arguments, but unfortunately I don’t see them in your post. I like the opportunity to debate though.