Background: initiating the uninformed

• Collaborative editing and intense cross-linking are what fuel the astounding growth and utility of Wikipedia, MySpace, del.icio.us, and Slashdot.

– These sites have fulfilled the possibilities presented by British scientist Francis Galton and further described by James Surowiecki in his book, The Wisdom of Crowds.

• The open-source software that best allows collaborative editing and exploits cross-linking is MediaWiki. It is robust, elegant, and (if the growth of Wikipedia is any gauge) easy to use.

– However, there’s one really amazing feature that’s resident within MediaWiki, which Wikipedia in 2001 chose not to enable, for fear that the “average user” at the time wouldn’t understand it.

– This is the semantic web – a revolutionary way of identifying and naming data points on the Internet. If you haven’t heard of semantic web yet, you will. In fact, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has literally written the roadmap for semantic web – he knows it’s that important.

The problem: millions of people are frustrated

• As everyday users (including businesses) get accustomed to reading and editing Wikipedia, perhaps 10-15% of them quickly become frustrated by two things:

1. Their own personal opinion – even expert opinion – about a topic can be overruled by just one or two other users (who may even be children) who have no expertise on the subject.

2. An individual or a company is profoundly discouraged from writing anything about itself – even to correct erroneous information in the article about its very self.

Why does it have to be so difficult to express one’s self in community-edited Internet space?

Talking points: for use on blogs, news interviews, and other forums

• Centiare breaks through this frustration by offering just a few key things to all users.

– Contributors must first register with a non-throwaway e-mail address, so there is a higher degree of authenticity among users.

– Contributors are encouraged to take ownership of Directory articles about themselves or their enterprises. They may write as opinionated advocates in the Directory – neutrality is not required. They can sell products, promote videos, upload documents. Almost anything goes in the Centiare Directory space!

– And here’s the real kicker… semantic web is installed on Centiare. This means you can perform amazing searches on Centiare that just wouldn’t be possible on Google, MySpace, or Wikipedia. Imagine multi-level searches for specific things, like:

Are there any white males, over 6 feet tall, with a Masters degree, in Pennsylvania? Locate all home heating oil companies, at least 50 years in business, in New Jersey. Find all Directory entities situated between the 39th and 40th parallels.

• Pretty cool, huh?

It’s all happening. Right now. At Centiare.com.