Web 2.0 describes the trend in Web technology and design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, especially, collaboration among users. Semantic Web refers to the intelligent interaction among systems and applications on the Web by deploying ontologies, semantic annotation of Web content, and reasoning. Its ultimate goal is to make data understandable to computers, and thus open to far greater utility and manipulation.

Edited by two Springer authors, this special issue of AoIS will present cutting-edge research on both of these often opposed trends in computing and will support discussion on both the synergies and controversies inherent in the two technologies, while also considering what other technologies can contribute to both. Dramatic advances in service-oriented architectures, model-driven engineering, and Web mining technologies are but a few of the developments that might have a considerable impact on both Web 2.0 and Semantic Web, and they will all be covered in this volume.

Topics to be covered will include ontologies and semantic annotations for Web 2.0 content and applications; semantic social networking; metamodeling, data and Web mining, policy engineering and model-driven engineering for both Semantic Web and Web 2.0; semantics-enhanced design of Web 2.0 applications; semantic content for collaborative applications; and semantic technologies for enabling reasoning in Web 2.0 applications. This is important material for anyone researching data and Web mining technologies, Web-based application development, applied AI, or service-driven architectures.