Zemanta, the Slovenian startup that won the first Seedcamp competition (and subsequently funding from Union Square Ventures, Eden Ventures and The Accelerator Group), has just launched a public semantic API here at the Le Web conference in Paris, as well as a front side SDK.
Zemanta is basically a platform that aims to help online content producers find related content from across the web to enhance their publication(s). A blog, an article or a web page can be fed into its system, which then recognizes it and returns suggested images, smart links, keywords and relevant related stories from the web.
Based on the input, the engine recommends links to content from: Amazon, our own CrunchBase, Wikipedia, Freebase, MusicBrainz, Flickr, Daylife, and social networks.
With the launch of the public API, Zemanta is opening up its technology for blogging platforms, media companies, other startups and content database owners, in order to enable them to leverage their unstructured content and enhance it with relevant related content (see image above).
Usage of the API is free for up to 10.000 API calls per month, and for a subscription fee above that.
Here’s how they say it works:
We analyze your post through our proprietary natural language processing and semantic algorithms, and statistically compare its contextual framework to our preindexed database of content. We are using a combination of machine learning techniques and end-user input from our widget users, that enables us to train the engine and constantly improve the recommendations.
This is definitely technology that has lots of potential, and it will be interesting to see if Zemanta will be the one leading the advancements in this space.