Introducing Semantic Commerce

Welcome to my new blog!

My name is Jerome Paradis, the president and founder of  Paradivision. I created this blog to share an open idea I call Semantic Commerce. I make my idea public because I wish to give a chance for that concept to evolve.

I first thought of Semantic Commerce about 5 years ago. At that time, I submitted a provisional patent. Sadly, I didn’t have the funds to finalize the patent. Plus, based on the technology available at the time, I felt the project was too huge to build a startup company to transform my idea into a reality.

My original idea was inspired by ideas from the semantic Web and RSS. Instead of adding semantic information as an afterthought to existing Web site and continue using HTML for content as well as presentation, why not use standard formats and APIs as the building blocks of the Internet to publish and share content? Web sites would still present results in HTML, but the underpinnings would be semantic at the base. By semantic, I mean that the information is properly structured and understood by default. We would be publishing information with a clear taxonomy and language.

Now is the Right Time

Since then, Facebook with its platform and API has realized a good example of the first half of the idea. With the proliferation of third parties developers, Web sites and tools building on Facebook and other platforms such as Twitter, many embraced the advantages of building on a common platform. This has been the motor on which innovation has swelled lately.

If we see the Facebook-type platforms as Web operating systems, then the second part of my original concept is called Semantic Commerce. I’m talking about the e-commerce operating system that will bring e-commerce to the next level. E-commerce is still at the 1.0 stage. It has not evolved much since its first days. With social media, the Web has morphed into a platform that better connects people. With Semantic Commerce, the Web will better interconnect businesses and better connect merchants with people.

I’ve worked more than a decade designing and building e-commerce platforms. I work now in social media and social gaming. Instead of keeping the concept aside and under drapes like I did for the last 5 years, I decided to share it with the world.

My goal is to start a conversation on the future of e-commerce. I dream that sooner than later, we will see new ventures and businesses build upon some of the ideas that will be shared and discussed on this blog.

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