Copyright 2005 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

www.deri.org

SIOC: Semantic Webfor

Social Media Sites

Uldis Bojārs

BarCamp Ireland 3Dublin - April 21, 2007

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Why Semantic Web?

• Semantic Web facilitates:– Innovation in Social Tools

• Provides rich, structured data– from Social Media Sites:– Blogs, Bulletin boards, Wikis, ...

• Data that can be used in:– Web 2.0 applications (Mash-Ups, ...)– Social Media integration and search

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What is Semantic Web?

• Layer on the Web – precise, structured information on:– Objects on the web and in the real world– Relations between them

• Resource Description Framework (RDF)– Foundation of the Semantic Web– Graph with objects (nodes) and relations between them

• Easy Integration of Data– Data of different nature (FOAF, SKOS, RSS, …)

• SIOC – model of data – for social media sites

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What is DERI?

• Digital Enterprise Research Institute• Established at NUI Galway in June 2003• One of the largest “Semantic Web” research institutes• About €25 million in funding from EU FP6, SFI, EI• Now has 80 members (staff and students)• Three main research clusters:

– Semantic Web– Semantic Web Services– E-Learning with Semantics

• About 100 project partners

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Evolution of online community sites

Online community sites:• Provide a valuable source of information• May contain rich meta-information • But are isolated from one another:

– Many sites discussing complementary topics

Next steps:• Connect sites together• Add more value:

– Let other sites know more about the structure and contents– Make more use of tagging and semantic metadata

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Limitations of Bulletin Boards

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What is SIOC?

• Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC)• Connecting forums, posts from many types of online

communities (blogs, forums, mailing lists, etc.)• Interesting possibilities:

– Distributed linked conversations– Decentralised discussion channels and communities– “I […] think the concept is HOT” – Robert Douglass, Drupal

Developer– “It just dawned on me that the burgeoning SIOC-o-sphere

(online communities exporting and exposing content via SIOC Ontology) is actually: Blogosphere 2.0” – Kingsley Idehen, Founder and CEO of OpenLink Software

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The Main Concepts in SIOC

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How can SIOC data be used?

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SIOC Tools and Data

Demo of a WordPress SIOC plugin• + Semantic Radar Firefox extension

Now we’ve got the data.

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SIOC Tools and Data

Demo:• WordPress SIOC plugin

– Creates data “pages” for all blog pages

Now we’ve got the data.

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Using RDF – well, it’s very simple !!!

• Python:

import RDF # Redland Python bindings

m = RDF.Model()

m.load('file:///data.rdf')

for statement in m:

print statement

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SIOC Tools and Data

Demo:• WordPress SIOC plugin

– Creates data “pages” for all blog pages

• Semantic Radar Firefox extension– Detects data on web pages

• SIOC Browser (in Python)– Data are linked – follow “rdfs:seeAlso” links to see more

• SIOC Explorer (in Ruby on Rails)– Faceted browsing

SIOC makes data available:• Opens up Social Media sites• Make Your Own Applications !!!

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SIOC browser (4)

A SIOC browser

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Browsing SIOC with TimeLine

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Other SIOC community applications

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The path to Semantic Web 2.0

• The Semantic Web effort is mainly towards producing standards and recommendations that will interlink applications

• The Web 2.0 meme is about providing user applications

• Not mutually exclusive:– http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/10/

is_web_20_killing_the_semantic.html– With a little effort, many Web 2.0 applications can and do use

Semantic Web technologies to great benefit– Take Web 2.0 and combine them with the Semantic Web

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Thank You!

SIOC• http://sioc-project.org/• SIOC-Dev mailing list

on Google Groups

Semantic Web FAQ• http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/SW-FAQ

RDF Tools: Redland (...), Jena (Java), ActiveRDF (Ruby), ...

Blog: http://captsolo.net/info/

E-mail: uldis.bojars@deri.org (aka CaptSolo)