Scott Brinker

Earlier this month, MIT ran a special Linked Data Product Development Lab during their Independent Activities Period (IAP). The lab brought together an eclectic mix of students and alumni, engineers and entrepreneurs, for a week of lectures, hands-on workshops, and collaborative team projects — all focused on the present-day capabilities of linked data. Sir Tim Berners-Lee kicked off the event with an inspiring talk about the vision of linked data. I had the pleasure of …

Linked data lab at MIT was excellent Continue Reading »

Earlier today, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt posted a great article on The Guardian’s Data Blog, Our manifesto for government data. They announced the public availability of the U.K.’s beta data.gov.uk site, a cornucopia of over 2,500 data sets of government data — everything from agriculture statistics to workplace employment by industry — open to anyone to use. It’s a great example of the 8th business model for data. And most of it adheres …

On Her Majesty’s linked data service Continue Reading »

In response to my post on linked data business models, Leigh Dodds at Talis wrote a terrific piece with his thoughts on the business of linked data. Leigh presents a number of great ideas that I think really carry the conversation forward. One of his points is that I overlooked an important model, what he calls the “sponsorship model.” Under this model, a government entity or a non-profit organization has a funded mandate to deliver …

The 8th linked data business model Continue Reading »

Now that major companies are implementing linked data, and more marketing thought leaders are championing data as an outward-facing competitive advantage, the question I’m hearing more frequently is: How do you turn data into revenue? Creating, publishing, and maintaining data takes work. What are the economic incentives for companies to put in the effort? Here’s my take on 7 business models for data web initiatives: I’ve organized these by how revenue is generated, from direct …

7 business models for linked data Continue Reading »

Josh Jones-Dilworth wrote a couple of great columns about data and marketing on Mashable.com, Marketing in 2010: It’s All About the Data and How Data Will Impact the Way We Do Business. In the first article, he makes the case for data as a marketing vehicle: In the near term, learn to think of data as an asset, and be creative. Data shapes conversations and markets. But data doesn’t come to you — organizationally, the …

Mashable makes much of marketing data Continue Reading »

There’s an exciting story that’s come out of this week’s Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in Chicago that should inspire everyone in online marketing and the semantic web — and most all, those of us interested in the intersection of the two. Jay Myers, lead web development engineer at Best Buy, presented a case study of what happened when they implemented the GoodRelations data vocabulary with RDFa microformat tags embedded in their pages, and the …

Best Buy jump starts data web marketing Continue Reading »