Enterprise Identity is not a Differentiator in Enterprise Search

Photo by Eric Ziegler

As I read David Amerland's book, and I learn more and more about how semantic search works, I start to get a better understanding of how semantic web and semantic search might work within the enterprise.  

In the David's book, he refers to identity as being very important for building trust, authority and reputation.  As I think about the enterprise, all content has an author associated with it, especially when the enterprise has a collaboration system like Jive or SharePoint. In addition all content on the intranet portal like the news and policies have an author.  So in the enterprise, identity is almost always associated with content.

As David explains, identity enables authority which enables trust and builds a persons reputation.  So the question that I asked myself is, if identity is critical for authority, trust and reputation.  And if all content in the enterprise has an identity associated with it, what is the differentiator that builds authority and trust?

The differentiator that I came up with is ... identity is not a differentiator but rather the differentiator happens downstream where reputation is built based on the person's ability to become an authority on a subject.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon Location 1261