Web 2.0 and 3.0, Social networks and Journalists

The semantic web and journalists

“Social media sites are like data silos”

John Breslin. Member of W3C Advisory Group and founder

of SIOCFlight times, blog entries, bookmarks, and news stories are usually delivered in different formats

and readable by different applications.

The Semantic Web is an attempt to link up various clouds of information.

The Semantic web aims to mesh this data and make it machine readable - globally.

This has profound implications for the whole web,

social media sites....andjournalistsRecent product launches have offered us a

coherent vision of what the early semantic web will look like.

HeadupTwine

OpenID

Semantic RadarGnosis

Open Calais

Search Monkey

Semantic Language

Specific projects underpin the Semantic Web include:Open ID - a free tool to use a single digital ID. 10,000 sites

now support

SIOC - Semantically Interlinked Online Communities - is the

language necessary to do the same for ‘objects’

FOAF is the language to enable us to use our profile data from one social media site to create another and mesh our various

identities across the web

A practical result is that you might do a search in

Facebook and obtain results from Twitter,

Bebo and your blog.

And the impact will extend beyond the web...Your RSS reader

may scan blog posts and news items for names that are in your contacts file. You may then be

given the option, for example, of

contacting them via mail or Twitter.

‘A lot of the focus from the public or media regarding the Semantic Web has been in relation to search.

But it's not solely about finding those relevant objects (people, places, etc.) through "Google killers",

and its not only about the Internet (despite being called web 3.0!),

but it's also about providing ways to allow systems (on the desktop, or the Web, or media servers -

whatever) to interoperate with each other as well,’John Breslin - Oct 2008

Twine - a new social media site underpinned by semantic technology. Beta invite only October 07

to 08. Open October 2008.

•It aims to offer far more functionality than other social bookmarking sites

•emphasis on the ‘network’ element enabling you to interact with ‘twines’ - groups who share the same interest

•and uses semantic technology to make relevant recommendations:...........

Twine learns about your

interests....

...to recommend

Members

Items

Other twines

And meshes other information

While ‘discovery’ sites such as delicious and digg hold attention for around 2 minutes per session

Twine members hang around for 15.

And here is a nice touch.....

This is Nova Spivack on

Twine. Twine

founder.

And here are links to his other web

‘profiles’

Including facebook and his FOAF file

Semantic Radar

Semantic Radar is a free Firefox plugin.

Alerts you when you encounter a page that contains semantic metadata.

For example, some social media sites export profile information as FOAF files - Vox,

LiveJournal

This is ‘dianach’ on LiveJournal. She write a

blog on Peace in Georgia.

When I navigate here, my Firefox browser

alerts me to semantic data.

This is the radar icon on Firefox showing this page contains FOAF

data.

When I click on the FOAF icon I obtain diana’s FOAF file.

ClearForest Gnosis

Gnosis is also a free Firefox plugin.

Allows you to ‘process’ a web page using the gnosis sidebar

After a few seconds the key facts on the page are highlighted

This is the Norway Post’s front page on

Tuesday.

With key facts highlighted

This is the Gnosis sidebar. Showing how many ‘facts’

fall under specific headings.

And this is a story with other facts

highlighted

When I place my cursor over the name of Erik

Poppe in teh news story a pop-up window

appears giving me the option to search in:

Linkedin, Facebook, Reuters and Wikipedia

among others.

This is the Wikipedia result which appears in a different Firefox tab.

This new page is automatically processed and

highlighted

This functionality applies semantic web solutions to non-semantic web pages.

Other tools are emerging using similar tactics.

Headup is another application that ‘layers’ information onto the web

page that you are looking at.

Launched by Semantinet, it is a browser plugin that meshes data

from your social network accounts.

Headup is in private beta at the moment, but you can apply to join.

http://www.headup.com/video.html

Semantic web searchSindice and SWSE are

both search tools that index and point to

semantic web data.

Results from Sindice are being used by developers

to improve web applications by providing enhanced information.

Keyword searches are interesting but they are not geared up yet for lay

users.

Open CalaisThe Open Calais project is a

offers a range of free tools to publishers,

bloggers and content provders.

Uses natural language processing to analyse

content.

Places facts in metadata in a way that

allows it to be linked (meshed) with other

data in exciting ways.

For example, publishers are

feeding their whole archives through

Calais to be tagged making it easier to search and filter.

http://blip.tv/file/869705

Search Monkey is Yahoo’s foray into the semantic

web.It aims to build the ‘next

generation’ of search results by allowing third party developers to build functionality onto Yahoo’s

platform which is based on semantic language - such as

FOAF and SIOC.You can now choose from around 70 search

enhancements including 16 for entertainment and 8 for technology.

For example, the ‘download.com’ enhancement means you can

download software directly from the search results page

The ‘XBox’ enhancement gives users extra information about xbox games

The ‘Stock Quotes’ enhancement gives users information from Yahoo!

Finance

This type of layered information and search functionality is a trend that we’ll need to get

used to.

But one issue will be slow to resolve....

Does Diana know that her FOAF profile is

exported by LiveJournal?

Will our friends know that headup is using their preferences and interests

to form my recommendations?

Do people who have FOAF profiles know their profiles exist outside of the social

networks they joined?

Does the average LiveJournal user know that their profile has been converted to a FOAF file and is now translatable by any number of new semantic

products?

Internet users will have to become used to the fact that the information that they don't specify as

private, can automatically end up on the semantic web?

I recently interviewed John Breslin about this.I asked:

‘No, certainly people aren't aware that many sites are making semantic forms of their content available which can be reused

elsewhere.  

Tribe.net recently turned off their FOAF exports after a user complained that his/her profile was being copied for use

elsewhere.

 Similar things happened with people blogging and finding that content from their RSS feeds was popping up on other sites.

 There certainly has to be more thought put into educating users and towards having opt-in / opt-out mechanisms when

implementing semantic exports, especially for personal content and profiles.’

This is John Breslin’s reply:

Privacy

web2.0 has demonstrated that journalists can access private and sensitive information in unexpected ways. Journalists need to keep

talking about what is professionally acceptable and what is not.

There is likely to be even more scope for accessing personal data in web3.0

See: http://www.journalism.co.uk/5/articles/532632.php

for my articles on journalists, research and the

semantic .

See also my blog post: http://www.journalism.co.uk/insite/?p=235

for the full interview with John Breslin.

Presentations available at:

www.journalism.co.uk/insite