In a of about 895 semantic technology experts and stakeholders, 47% of the respondents agreed that Berners-Lee's vision of a semantic Web won't be realized or make a significant difference to end users by the year 2020. On the other hand, 41% of those polled predicted that it would. The remainder did not answer that query.

The basic W3C standards are finalized and gaining support, and there's an increasing number of platforms and software tools. Still, semantic Web technology -- and standards -- are far from achieving that critical mass of support needed to fully exploit their benefits, experts agree.

It's important at this point to make a clear distinction between semantic technologies in general and semantic Web technologies that make use of W3C standards and that specifically apply to Web information sources.

Semantic technologies are definitely catching on, particularly for enterprise knowledge management and business intelligence, experts agree. The market for semantic-based text analysis tools that help users "find what they want in unstructured information" is growing at about 20% per year, says Susan Feldman, an analyst at research firm IDC. Moreover, most enterprise search platforms now include semantic technology, she says.