HuffPo & The 'Wisdom of Machines' Crack Open Semantic Web Portal

Looking forward from the confines of our Web 2.0 perch, we are beginning see signs of the Web 3.0 portal open slightly. While a lot of folks still think semantic technology is a lot of hype based on theories and suppositions attached to artificial intelligence, the reality is "it's in the works" and the Huffington Post is one of the first news outlets to test the waters.

With the recent acquisition of Adaptive Semantics, Inc., and their proprietary semantic technology tool JuLiA, HuffPo is investing in the 'wisdom of machines' to curate the 'wisdom of crowds.'


With a promotional tagline of "artificially intelligent, naturally smart," ASI specializes in sentient analysis, powered by cutting edge machine learning methods. From major blog networks like CNN and Newsweek to social networks, to community reviews, JuLiA aggregates the community moderation process to surface  content of consequence.

Presently, according to a TechCrunch report, HuffPo moderates 100,000 comments published on their blog every day which totals close to 3 million per month. To cull through that amount of comment data is a monumental task that can no longer be adequately handled by "humans." Hence, the need for JuLiA.

Jeff ReveszAccording to co-founder Jeff Revesz, JuLiA uses "supervised machine learning" to not only flag spam and abusive language, but more importantly to help bubble up the best conversations from those readers who may be 'topic experts' in certain fields.

As a social network itself and the number one top online news blogs in the world, according to Technorati, its success is based on not only supplying cutting-edge and real-time content but engaging their readers in a variety of ways, from leaving comments to sharing posts across the Web via Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

Owning this type of technology in-house definitely gives the news outlet a leg up over the competition. In fact, Eric Hippeaunow that Adaptive Semantic Inc is owned outright by the blogging site, it will eventually sever the ties ASI had with other news outlets such as CNN and Newsweek. According to CEO Eric Hippeau. “We will honor the contracts, but very likely will not renew them," as HuffPo doesn't want to be in the licensing business, nor share their Web 3.0 technology with the competition.

Once we go full throttle into the 'Brave New World,' of the Semantic Web, it's said that machines will do all the heavy lifting. Today's blogger will eventually become tomorrow's dinosaur where content will not only be curated by machines but composed and developed by them. While it may sound like a bleak future, I'm sure there will be more elevated pursuits man will have in managing this 'assembly-line' automated landscape. We just might have to share the stage with a lot of humanoids to get that work down.

For other related posts on "Web 3.0," and "Semantic Technology," check out some of my previous posts:

• Workstations For The Web 3.0 Crowd Are Not Your Father's Cubicle!
• New Industrial Revolution Sabotages Social Media!
• 100 Years Of Social Media
• The Semantic Web As Big Brother Could Have Prevented The BP Oil Disaster
• Web 3.0, A Witness Protection Program For Artificial Intelligence