The Future of Social Networks on the Internet: The Need for Semantics

Slide 1: The Future of Social Networks on the Internet: The Need for Semantics John G. Breslin, Stefan Decker, Uldis Bojars {firstname.lastname@deri.org} Semantic Technologies Conference / San Jose, USA / 19th May 2008  Copyright 2008 Digital Enterprise Research www.deri.org Institute. All rights reserved.

Slide 2: URL for the presentation View the slides at Slideshare: http://url.ie/e46 2

Slide 3: Where in the world are we? 3

Slide 4: Our mission and vision • DERI Galway’s mission is “to exploit semantics for: – People – Organisations – Systems • to collaborate and interoperate on a global scale” • DERI Galway’s vision is “to be recognised as being among the leading international web science research institutes interlinking technologies, information and people to advance business and benefit society” 4

Slide 5: Some statistics • Founded June 2003 with 1 fulltime member (green field) • Status as of May 2008: – About 130 members (from 27 nations) and growing • Total research grants: – About €23M so far, 17 national and 16 EU projects • Research publications > 370 – Leading in International and European Semantic Web Conferences – Participates in 12 standardisation groups • Example technologies: – Semantic Digital Libraries – Semantic Desktop (in KDE4) – Semantic Web Search Engine 5

Slide 6: Core industrial partners 6

Slide 7: On the shoulders of giants… • Memex (Vannevar Bush) A memex is “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications.” • Augmenting Human Intellect (Doug Engelbart) “By \"augmenting human intellect\" we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems.” • WWW (Tim Berners-Lee) “There was a second part of the dream […] we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we re doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together.” 7

Slide 8: It wasn’t the right time then… Where are we now? 8

Slide 9: Now, we are making progress… 9

Slide 10: A network of knowledge… • Interconnected • Universal • All encompassing • Enable global and local collaboration • The right information for the right people at the right time 10

Slide 11: Getting to work in the DERI house 11

Slide 12: What we’re going to talk about today… 1. Collaborating via the Social Web 3. Social networking services (SNSs) so far 5. Issues with social networking services 7. Leveraging semantics on the Social Web: • FOAF and SIOC • Producers • Collectors • Consumers 8. Leveraging semantics in Enterprise 2.0 SNSs 12

Slide 13: Social media sites are like data silos 13 * Source: Pidgin Technologies, www.pidgintech.com

Slide 14: Many isolated communities of users and their data 14 * Source: Pidgin Technologies, www.pidgintech.com

Slide 15: Need ways to connect these islands 15 * Source: Pidgin Technologies, www.pidgintech.com

Slide 16: Allowing users to easily move from one to another 16 * Source: Pidgin Technologies, www.pidgintech.com

Slide 17: Enabling users to easily bring their data with them 17 * Source: Pidgin Technologies, www.pidgintech.com

Slide 19: A move from the Web to a “social web” The New Yorker, 1993 The New Yorker, 2005 “On the Internet, nobody knows “I had my own blog for a while, you’re a dog.” but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking.” 19

Slide 20: What is social media? • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media – “Social media uses the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to connect information in a collaborative manner.” – “Social media can take many different forms, including message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video.” • Popular examples of social media sites: – Wikipedia, MySpace / Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SecondLife, Upcoming, Digg / Reddit / StumbleUpon, Flickr / Zooomr, del.icio.us, World of Warcraft, Amazon • Related terms: – Web 2.0, Social Web, social software, social networks, social news, social bookmarking, user-generated content 20

Slide 21: What is Web 2.0? • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 – “Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services - such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies - which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.” • The term Web 2.0 was made popular by Tim O’Reilly: – http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what -is-web-20.html 21

Slide 22: Features / principles of Web 2.0 (O’Reilly) 1. The Web as platform 2. Harnessing collective intelligence 3. Data is the next “Intel Inside” 4. End of the software release cycle 5. Lightweight programming models 6. Software above the level of a single device 7. Rich user experiences + The long tail 22

Slide 23: Web 2.0 and social media in simple terms 1. Users 2. Content 3. Tags 4. Comments – Users post content – Users share content – Users annotate content with tags – Users browse content via tags – Users discuss content via comments – Users connect via posted content – Users connect directly to users 23

Slide 24: Content can be… • Books Amazon • Discussion postings Blogs • Bookmarks del.icio.us • Photos Flickr • Music Last.fm • Movies Netflix • Events Upcoming.org • Places Dopplr • Products Microsoft Aura • Articles Wikipedia 24

Slide 25: Blogging: a phenomenon for a new generation? • Cincinnati Enquirer, October 2004 25

Slide 26: Overview of blogs • Weblog, web log or simply a blog is a web journal • “A web application which contains periodic time-stamped posts on a common (usually open-access) webpage” • Individual diaries -> arms of political campaigns, media programs and corporations (e.g. the Google Blog) • Citizen journalism… • Posts are often shown in reverse chronological order • Comments can be made by the public on some blogs • Latest headlines, with hyperlinks and summaries, are syndicated using RSS or Atom formats (e.g. for reading favourite blogs with a feed reader) 26

Slide 27: The state of the blogosphere from Technorati • 70 million blogs • The blogosphere is doubling in size every 320 days (slowing down a little) • 120,000 new blogs are created each day (i.e. 1.4 new blogs every second) • 1.5 million blog posts are made in a day (i.e. 17 posts per second) • Around 5-10% of new blogs are spam blogs or “splogs” • 35% of blog posts use tags 27

Slide 28: Definition of wikis • A wiki is a type of website that allow users to easily add and edit content and is especially suited for collaborative writing • The name is based on the Hawaiian term wiki-wiki, meaning “quick”, “fast”, or “to hasten” • It amasses to a group of web pages that allows users to quickly add content and also allows others to edit the content: – It relies on cooperation, checks and balances of its members, and a belief in sharing of ideas

Slide 29: Some uses of wikis • Wikis are being used for: – online encyclopaedias – free dictionaries – book repositories – software development – project proposals – writing research papers – event organisation

Slide 30: The Wikipedia: from Irish to Esperanto 30

Slide 31: Flickr, share your photos 31

Slide 32: SlideShare for presentations 32

Slide 33: The social bookmarking service del.icio.us 33

Slide 34: All Consuming, what have you read today? 34

Slide 35: LibraryThing, find out who else reads like you 35

Slide 36: CiteULike, get publication references from peers 36

Slide 37: Upcoming event listings and meetups 37

Slide 38: Dopplr for managing travel, tracking friends abroad 38

Slide 39: TouristR for travel destination stories and info 39

Slide 40: You can even share your favourite walks… 40

Slide 41: …and find others with like musical interests 41

Slide 43: We all live in a social network… • …of friends, family, workmates, fellow students, acquaintances, etc. 43

Slide 44: Everyone’s connected… • Friend of a friend, or “dúirt bean liom go ndúirt bean leí” • Theor

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