"The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." Linked Data is the use of all that information in a manner that essentially treats the entire web as one virtual database, allowing data to be pulled and manipulated from multiple sites as a single query and, beyond that, allows the sites queried to point to other locations that might have useful information.
Linked Data Ventures is a graduate-level class that combines traditional academics with practitioner perspectives and practical hands-on experience, to empower students to launch new ventures using this technology. From the instructor team, students will learn the technical components that are needed to produce Linked Data offerings, will learn business skills fundamental to growing and sustaining a venture. Weekly guest lecturers will provide insights into how they use the technology in their business and their experience launching a venture. This is a unique course in which teaching is shared between EECS and the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and learning is a cooperative effort between EECS and Sloan students. A team-based project will culminate in sustainable prototypes that could be freeware or have the potential to be commercialized in the future, and will serve as a good launching point for entering into the MIT 100k competition. At the end of the semester, each project team will do a business presentation in front of the whole class and a panel of outside experts and judges, as well as a technical presentation as the conclusion of the lab.
The faculty were clearly interested in encouraging adoption/development of commercial applications. To that end we had several speakers from industry showing off some early-stage applications, and the project teams had to build simple apps based on the technology.
One of the teams actually did achieve success, building a prototype restaurant database using Semantic Web technologies we learned in class. It eventually grew into a commercial service and was acquired by GoDaddy about five years ago. However, to scale it beyond the prototype they had to move beyond Semantic Web concepts and use a different technology approach; IIRC the founder said it just wasn't ready for prime time. He mentioned latency was a huge issue.