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Social Media and Web 2.0
1. Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Social Media and Web 2.0
Alexandre Passant <alexandre.passant@deri.org>
Digital Enterprise Research Institute,
National University of Ireland, Galway
DM110 Emerging Web Media
20th October 2008
Copyright 2008 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.
Chapter
2. Introductions
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Alexandre Passant
Postdoctoral researcher
DERI, NUI Galway
Social Software cluster
Research Interests
Web 2.0 and Social Media
Semantic Web and Linked Data
Combining both to provide advanced / intelligent services on
the Web for end-users
What about you ?
3. Previous lectures
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Overview of the World Wide Web
History and technical architecture, HTML programming
Publishing content on the Web
Content Management Systems, Drupal case-study
Digital media
Formats for multi-media content on the Web
XML and XHTML
Validating HTML and going further with XHTML
Translating data from one format to another one
RSS to aggregate data, XSLT to translate it
4. But ...
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Is there a way to publish data on the Web without
high-level technical skills ?
Focus on the content rather than on the technical issues
A large-scale writable-Web
How to use the Web as a medium to share data and
get new relationships ?
The Web as a platform
On-line social networking
This is exactly what this lecture is about !
5. Agenda
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
General introduction to Social Media and Web 2.0
Blogs
Wikis
Media-sharing and Online Social Networking
Overview of various Web 2.0 services
Licensing issues
Web 1.0 / Web 2.0 / Semantic Web
Assignments
Hands-on sessions during the lecture
6. From the Web to a “Social Web”
The New Yorker, 1993
“On the Internet, nobody knows
you’re a dog.”
6
7. 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.”
6
8. What is Social Media ?
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
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 (details later)
Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Upcoming,
SecondLife, Digg, del.cio.us, 43things ...
Related terms
Web 2.0, Social Web, social software,
Social networks, social bookmarking, user-generated content
9. What is Web 2.0 ?
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
A term made popular by Tim O’Reilly
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/
2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
“A set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable
solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those
principles, at a varying distance from that core.”
... but also a copyrighted term for conferences
10. Web 2.0 principles (O’Reilly)
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
The Web as a platform
Harnessing collective intelligence
Data is the next “Intel Inside”
End of the software release cycle
Lightweight programming models
Software above the level of a single device
Rich user experiences
The long tail
11. Web 2.0 meme map
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13. Social Media in simple terms
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Users Users post content
Content Users share content
Tags Users tag content
Interactivity Users comment content
Users browse content via tags
Users connect directly
14. How many Web 2.0 services ?
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A lot !
See http://techcrunch.com
But some of them may not survive ...
16. What is a blog ?
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
A blog, or weblog (web log) is an online journal
“A web application which contains periodic time-stamped
posts on a common (usually open-access) webpage”
Posts are often shown in reverse chronological order
Usually, blog posts can be commented by the readers
Generally features RSS feeds to syndicate latest news
A wide range of use-cases:
Individual diaries, group blogs on technical topics
Political campaigns, media programs and corporations
(e.g. the Google Blog)
Grassroots journalism
Well-known bloggers may even blog as a daily-job
17. Anatomy of a weblog (frontend)
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18. Anatomy of a weblog (backend)
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19. State of the blogosphere
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20. Why ? Who ? How ?
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http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/
21. Tagging blog posts
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A simple for user-generated classification
Anyone can use his own term
No need to learn a predefined vocabulary
Evolves among time, thanks to users themselves
Tagging
A tripartite relationship between a User, a Resource, a Tag
Folksonomy
The result of tagging actions in a given platform
Tagclouds allow visual representation of folksonomies
As we will see later, many media-sharing platform
also extensively use tagging
23. How to discover blogs ?
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Lots of people blog, but data is spread on the Web
By nature, the Web is distributed, so is weblogging
Anyone can create a weblog, but how to find it ?
Blogrolls and hyperlinks
Will help to find related blogs from a particular one
Dedicated search engines
Technorati - http://techorati.com
Google Blogsearch - http://blogsearch.google.com
Using those search engines, you can then use your
RSS aggregators to follow interesting news
On-line aggregators, e.g. http://google.com/reader
Desktop applications, e.g. http://netnewswire.com
24. Create your own blog !
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Free online services
blogger.com, wordpress.com ...
Open-source tools
WordPress, B2Evolution ...
You will need you own hosting space on the Web,
generally with ability to embeds PHP in webpages and
MySQL for data storage
Some CMS also offer blogging capabilities
Drupal, Joomla ...
You may need to install a particular blogging module
Let’s create your own blog !
On wordpress.com
25. Wikis
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable
anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a
simplified markup language.[1][2] Wikis are often used to create
collaborative websites and to power community websites.
WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki) was the first site to
be called a wiki. Ward Cunningham started developing
WikiWikiWeb in 1994,
26. Wiki principles
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
A wiki is an informational resource, like a reference
manual, encyclopedia, or handbook
The most famous is Wikipedia, a highly used, online, free-
access encyclopedia
It amasses to a group of web pages that allows
users to 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
Contrary to weblogs, wikis focus on community agreement
rather than on personal views of a topic
This creates a community effort in resource and
information management, disseminating the 'voice'
amongst many instead of concentrating it upon few
27. What are wikis used for ?
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Lots of various use-cases
online encyclopaedias
free dictionaries
book repositories
event management
software development
writing research papers
project proposals
But be careful
What is said in a wiki is not
necessary the truth !
Always check other information sources
31. Wiki editing and auto-regulation
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In a Wiki, anyone can edit exiting content, create
new pages, and delete existing content
WikiWords are used to create new pages and a simple
syntax allows to write pages without HTML
A versioning mechanism allows to browse and retrieve
older versions to avoid vandalism
Auto-regulation
People voluntary maintain the wiki to avoid vandalism
Let’s try !
– Choose a Wikipedia page regarding a topic that you like
– Edit the page and add a personal comment, without any
encyclopedic value (e.g. “This movie rocks, I’ve seen it ten
times”)
– Let’s come back in 20 minutes ...
32. Media Sharing and OSN
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Many Web 2.0 websites allow to upload and share
data:
Pictures, Videos, Slides, Events, Playlists, Bookmarks, ...
Tag content so that it can be discovered
Most of them include an online social-networking
(OSN) component
Meet people because you share the same interests
Object-centric social networking
While some websites are pure OSN
Meet people through others
Various purposes: dating, friendship, business contacts
We will see various examples now !
39. Last.fm use-case
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Create an account
http://last.fm/
Share your musical tastes
Plug-ins for iTunes and iPod
Discover new content
Based on what you’re listening to
Find people you may like
Because you’re listening to the same bands
And create your social network
Announce concerts, subscribe to events
Chat with people online before you meet them in real life
40. Last.fm use-case
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Create an account
http://last.fm/
Share your musical tastes
Plug-ins for iTunes and iPod
Discover new content
Based on what you’re listening to
Find people you may like
Because you’re listening to the same bands
And create your social network
Announce concerts, subscribe to events
Chat with people online before you meet them in real life
41. Last.fm use-case
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Create an account
http://last.fm/
Share your musical tastes
Plug-ins for iTunes and iPod
Discover new content
Based on what you’re listening to
Find people you may like
Because you’re listening to the same bands
And create your social network
Announce concerts, subscribe to events
Chat with people online before you meet them in real life
44. Online Social Networking
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
While the previous websites feature social-
networking components, this is not their main
purpose
You can use them only to publish / discover data
Some websites are pure Social Networking:
Friendships and relationships
Offline meetings
Curiosity about others
Business opportunities and hob hunting
They allow a user to create and maintain an online
network of close friends or business associates for
social and professional reasons
50. Other Web 2.0 services
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Blogs, wikis, OSN and media sharing are the most
popular form of Social Media websites
But many other services are available on the Web
Microblogging
Videoblogging
Podcasting
Social Aggregators
...
Mash-ups will allow to combine data from various
Web 2.0 services to create your own
Eg: Display upcoming concerts on a GoogleMap
– Topic of our next lectures
51. Microblogging ?
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Short updates of your activity lifestream
Publish from various devices and share it to anyone
A new form of agile communication
Twitter.com
The most famous microblogging website
140 characters max per update
Let’s try
Go to http://twitter.com and create an account
Start publishing some data that will be available on your
public timeline http://twitter.com/myusername
Find people that you want to follow
53. Social Aggregators
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How to let people browse my social data from a
single entry point
Social aggregators can help
– Eg: FriendFeed
We will see in our next lecture how the Semantic Web can
provide alternatives, but thanks to open standards and
process
Privacy issues
What do you want to publish ?
Who can access it ?
– Do you really want your lecturer to see your latest party
pictures ?
Work still must be done in that direction !
54. Licensing issues
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
When you publish content online, you may allow
people to reuse it, but you want to keep some kind
of ownership
So that your work can be recognized
Licensing does not unallow to give your work ‘for free’
– E.g.: Free-source software licenses (GPL ...)
Creative Commons - http://creativecommons.org
Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally
Decide what people can do with your content
– Reuse it ? Edit it ? Sell it ?
6 different contracts
Some bands put their songs using a CC-licence
– http://jamendo.com
56. Find, identify and re-use CC content
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57. Find, identify and re-use CC content
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58. Find, identify and re-use CC content
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59. Find, identify and re-use CC content
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60. Web 1.0 / Web 2.0
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Web 1.0 Web 2.0
Platforms Netscape, Internet Explorer Google Services, AJAX, Flock
Web Pages Personal Websites Blogs
Portals Content Management Systems Wikis
Encyclopediæ Britannica Online Wikipedia
Talk Netmeeting Skype, Asterisk
Knowledge Directories, Taxonomies Tagging, Folksonomies
Referencing Stickiness Syndication
Content Akamai BitTorrent, P2P
Events Evite Upcoming.org
(updated from O’Reilly)
61. ... 2.0 or 0.1 ?
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
“Web 2.0” is not far from the initial idea of the Web
“The idea was that anybody who used the web would have
a space where they could write and so the first browser
was an editor, it was a writer as well as a reader. Every
person who used the web had the ability to write
something. [...] When you write a blog, you don't write
complicated hypertext, you just write text, so I'm very,
very happy to see that now it's gone in the direction of
becoming more of a creative medium” - Tim Berners-Lee -
Interview with the BBC (2005) - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/
hi/technology/4132752.stm
We’ll see in our next lecture that the (Social)
Semantic Web is even more near from the initial
vision of the Web !
62. Assignment
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Choose a particular project / interest that you have
Describe and implement your Social Media strategy
to promote it to a worldwide audience !
Define and argue which tools you will use (blogs, OSN ...)
Then create some account(s) and publish content ... keep
it alive if you can, and you might be able to create a
community around it !
Finally, provide a single entry point so that people can
discover all your Social Media regarding to that topic
content from a single entry point
– HTML document with links to different sources, aggregated
RSS feeds, FriendFeed accout ...
mailto: alexandre.passant@deri.org before 09 Nov.
63. Credits
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Some slides based on:
Last year lectures by John Breslin
Social Semantic Web tutorials
– WWW2008
– RWSS2008
CC-Pictures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HNL_Wiki_Wiki_Bus.jpg
http://flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/462105429/
http://flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/93136022/