Freebase

Freebase is an open, semantically marked up database of information. It looks similar to Wikipedia, but Freebase is all about structured data and what you can do with it.

Freebase has been one of the more hyped companies in Semantic Web, leading to some skepticism that the product is too much like Wikipedia and offers nothing much new. In May '08, we attempted to dispel the Freebase skepticism. Our conclusion was that the structured database, API, creative commons licensing - among other things - all added up to a richer product than Wikipedia. Then in July, we reported that Freebase was about to hit 4 million topics in its collection - which at the time was 60% more than the English Wikipedia.

However, we noted some concerns with Freebase - "big gaps in the data" along with usability issues. In a follow-up article in August, we covered an interesting tool for browsing Freebase, called Freebase Parallax. Unfortunately, when we tried out a number of searches in Parallax, very few subjects were well populated.

RWW verdict one year later: still lots of work to do for Freebase, in terms of usability and useful data.

Calais (was ClearForest)

When we did our round-up one year ago, ClearForest had been recently acquired by Reuters and at that point it had a Web Service and a Firefox extension. What a change a year brings! ClearForest went on to release Calais, a toolkit of products that enable users to incorporate semantic functionality within their blog, content management system, website or application.

Since launching the Open Calais API early this year, over 6,000 developers have registered with it and the service is doing more than 1 million transactions a day. We wrote about the launch of Calais' easiest-to-use service yet, called SemanticProxy, at the end of September. Version 3.0 was released earlier this month and version 4 is expected by January 09.

RWW verdict one year later: Calais has really blossomed over the past year and it is one of the most promising Semantic services around today. We can't wait to see what's next!

Powerset

Powerset (see our initial coverage here and here) is a natural language search engine. It's fair to say that Powerset has had a great 2008, having been acquired by Microsoft in July this year.

At the time of the acquisition, Powerset said that it needed a bigger partner to expand its product beyond its current state of only searching Wikipedia - something we had speculated about when the rumors of the acquisition first appeared. In its own statement, Microsoft stressed how useful Powerset's technology will be for improving Microsoft's own search products and to "take Search to the next level." In our analysis of the deal, we noted that it was a "bold play requiring exact execution" by Microsoft. We thought it was doubtful that Microsoft bought the company just to enhance Live Search - although in September Microsoft did just that. Possibly the plan is to replicate the Wikipedia solution, then incorporate Powerset into Internet Explorer.

RWW verdict one year later: successful acquisition for Powerset, bold one for the acquirer Microsoft. Can't wait to see what Microsoft does with it!

Twine

Definitely one of the more controversial of the Semantic apps we've covered on ReadWriteWeb. At launch last year, Twine claimed to be the first mainstream Semantic Web app. The company's founder Nova Spivack hasn't been shy to talk the product up even more over the past year. Version 1.0 of Twine was launched late October. At that time Spivack told us that Twine had 500,000 unique visitors in its closed beta, of which 50,000 are currently "active" (a user who visits the Twine site at least once per month). There were 20,000 'twines' at that point, with 1 million pieces of content having been added to the system.

Those statistics are OK for a relatively young beta, however Twine has also been beset by usability and performance issues in its beta period. In March we summed it up with a post entitled: Twine Disappoints After Semantic Web Hype.

RWW verdict one year later: still far from mainstream and reviews have been disappointing user experience has been an issue over the past year. Struggling to find its niche.

Update: Some people have pointed out in comments and via email that many reviews of Twine have been positive. We agree and so we've struck out that line and clarified our position - that user experience has been the main issue.

Hakia

Hakia is a search engine focusing on natural language processing methods to try and deliver 'meaningful' search results. Hakia attempts to analyze the concept of a search query, in particular by doing sentence analysis. Over the past year Hakia has been busy extending its reach - licensing its proprietary OntoSem technology to other companies in March and announcing a Semantic API in June. It also released a social network of sorts, called h-Club.

RWW verdict one year later: Hakia has made good progress getting its technology into the hands of third parties. It's a steep challenge taking on Google though.