The semantic web according to Expert System and Banzai, 3-18-2009
Banzai, a leader amongst Italian Web operators of e-commerce, Internet media and Web services, along with Expert System, a leading provider of semantic software that searches, discovers, classifies and interprets text information, announce a strategic collaboration to simplify and make it more efficient for Liquida users to search information contained in blogs.
With the integration of the features of Cogito, Expert System’s semantic software, Liquida, the first Italian Web portal composed entirely of user-generated information, shall become the first Italian Internet site to offer the advanced features of a semantic Web. For instance, it will be able to highlight and give greater visibility to the posts produced by bloggers while improving the efficiency of the editorial aspects.
The ability to automatically understand text allows Cogito to enrich the text of a post with a series of information which helps users navigate with greater ease and quickly find the content they are interested in. Semantic technology is capable of comprehending the meaning of text and identifying its main concepts: the approach taken by Liquida and Expert System is the only one able to actually realize a semantic Web which, in this case, is useful for extracting knowledge from the information published online by bloggers.
How it works
Basically, the jointly developed application on Liquida (currently released in beta) supports the following activities of
– post categorization: automatically orders the large volume of text found on Liquida and classifies it based on its subject matter;
– extrapolation of information of interest: automatically performs a tagging operation, which identifies and extracts the significant data and the most relevant concepts cited in the text, thus improving the precision for future searches;
– article navigation: facilitates the users’ access to content by signaling a correlation to posts and news which deal with similar subjects;
– sentiment monitoring and analysis: analyzes content and automatically picks up the opinions expressed in the posts in order to define any possible trends which show not only what is discussed in the blogs, but also how it is discussed;
– analysis of users’ requests: immediately interprets the users’ searches which are expressed in natural language and responds by offering precise content.
“The strategic partnership with Expert System will soon allow Liquida to give users a Web portal which contains a vast amount of information and at the same time, is user-friendly,” states Andrea Santagata, CEO of Liquida and Marketing Director of Banzai. “The close collaboration between both companies’ development teams has been an advantageous use of assets and knowledge, which have allowed us to apply the potentials of semantics efficiently and specifically in the area of user-generated content”.
“This application, jointly developed with Liquida, demonstrates that by being aware of the needs of your users and employing the proper technology, it is possible to create innovative solutions which make the so-called concept of a Semantic Web a reality,” stated Marco Varone, President and CTO of Expert System. “Liquida is an excellent partner to demonstrate the potential of Cogito even in the consumer Web application sector”.
“The strategic partnership between Expert System and Liquida is the beginning of a series of collaborations between Expert System and the Banzai Group,” said Paolo Ainio, President and CEO of Banzai. “Expert System is already cooperating with us on a second innovative project which will be released within the next few months”.
The collaboration between Liquida and Expert System has led the two companies to make major improvements to the Italian version of Liquida, and will also soon make the first version for the English-speaking world available.
About Liquida-Banzai
Liquida, the web portal of user-generated information of the Banzai Group, brings out the best in Italian blogs and makes its content more available. Launched in August 2008, Liquida is currently used by over one million web users (source: Nielsen Online Jan. 09), who have access to over 7,000 posts published daily from over 11,000 blog sources selected by Liquida.
Banzai is an Italian group which operates in the Internet market, especially in the sectors of media, e-commerce and web services. Founded in 2006 by Paolo Ainio, a pioneer of the Italian internet, the group now holds over 21 companies. With 7.5 million single users, it is classified amongst the top players in the Italian web, alongside Telecom Italia, Wind, L’Espresso Group and RCS Group (data: Nielsen Online Jan. 09).
