Semantics in Publishing & Media

© 2010 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

SEMANTICS IN PUBLISHING & MEDIA: RECENT RESEARCH RESULTS SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 2010

RACHEL LOVINGER

@RLOVINGER


ABOUT ME: RACHEL LOVINGER

‣ Content Strategy Lead, Razorfish, NYC

‣ Previously worked on websites at Time Inc.

‣ Five years speaking at SemTech

‣ Co-editor of scatter/gather, a content strategy blog: http://scattergather.razorfish.com

‣ Started a Semantic Web affinity group

‣ Author of Nimble: A Razorfish Report on Publishing in the Digital Age

Photo by Rohanna Mertens

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kingdatoro/535286146/�


BACKGROUND

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‣ A rich source of information and practical advice about how to use semantic technologies in business and consumer applications

‣ A really good place to become educated about the foundational concepts and technologies of semantics

‣ Organizers of SemTech 2010

‣ Visit their booth in the exhibit hall for more information

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‣ Creates experiences that build businesses. Pioneers and recognized experts around a user-centered, insight-driven approach to designing web experiences

‣ With a demonstrated commitment to innovation, Social Influence Marketing, emerging media, creative design, analytics, technology and user experience

‣ One of the largest interactive marketing and technology companies in the world, with offices in 9 U.S. cities, Latin America, Europe and Asia/Pacific:

- Atlanta - Berlin- Austin, TX - Frankfurt- Chicago - London- Los Angeles - Madrid- New York - Paris- Philadelphia - Hong Kong- Portland, OR - Shanghai- San Francisco - Singapore- Seattle - Sydney- São Paulo, Brazil - Tokyo

5Photo by Rachel Lovinger

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mirka23/2124416960/�



RESEARCH QUESTION

How can the needs of Media & Entertainment

companies be supported by semantic technologies?

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WHY MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT?

‣ Content is the core business, but often the content lacks structure.

‣ Proliferation of content sources fight for audience attention.

‣ Waning revenue makes it desirable to explore daring new approaches.

‣ Emerging delivery platforms require content to be served in new ways.

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‣ Nic Newman

‣ Tony Ageh

‣ Simon Nelson

‣ Jim Stanley

‣ John Squires

MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT INTERVIEWS

Talking Points Memo

‣ Josh Marshall

‣ Martin Nisenholtz

‣ Michael Zimbalist

‣ Rob Larson

‣ Evan Sandhaus

‣ Gordon McLeod

8


WHY SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGY?

‣ An emerging set of standards and tools that need User Experience experts.

‣ Existing semantic technologies could provide a lot of benefits to these companies.

‣ Some Media & Entertainment properties are already starting to work with these technologies.

9


SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEWS

Dean Allemang, Chief Scientist, TopQuadrant, Inc.

Scott Brinker, President and CTO, ion interactive

Christine Connors, Principal, TriviumRLG LLC

Robert Cook, Founder, Freebase and Metaweb

Mills Davis, Founder and Managing Director, Project10X

Bob DuCharme, semantic web guy, TopQuadrant, Inc.

Paul Miller, Consultant, Cloud of Data

Alan Morrison, Sr. Research Fellow, PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Brian Sletten, Senior Platform Engineer, Riot Games

Nova Spivack, Founder and CEO, Radar Networks

David Weinberger, Consultant and Author, Everything is Miscellaneous

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NIMBLEA Razorfish Research Report

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WHY NIMBLE?

‣ Being nimble is about:

‣ Business models‣ Production processes‣ The content itself

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BEING NIMBLE MEANS…

‣ Being able to take advantage of new partnerships and revenue opportunities as soon as they arise

‣ Being able to serve content on all different channels and devices

‣ Being able to develop new content products and services faster, easier, and less expensively

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CONTENT NEEDS TO BE FREE(LIKE A BIRD, NOT LIKE BEER)

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Simply put, digital content needs to be free – to go where and when people want it most.

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In particular, content has to be mobile, and it has to be social.

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ESCAPING THE CONTAINER

Digital media doesn’t have the

same physical constraints as

traditional media

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© 2010 Razorfish. All rights reserved. 19Photo by Michael @ NW Lens

Column inches

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aboyandhisbike/3510789195/�


© 2010 Razorfish. All rights reserved. 20Photo by inky

Number of pages

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clankennedy/3016832919/�




© 2010 Razorfish. All rights reserved. 21Photo by luis vasquez

Bits & Minutes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luis_3d/198597612/�






© 2010 Razorfish. All rights reserved. 22Photo by Tatian

Grooves in vinyl

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maydaytatian/3933996241/�




© 2010 Razorfish. All rights reserved. 23Source: The Futon Critic

Time slots

http://www.thefutoncritic.com/guide/fall-2010-grid/�



WE DON’T HAVE THE SAME LIMITATIONS FOR DIGITAL

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620 pages

3 hours3 minutes

102 characters

BBC © MMX, Jason Scott, Semantic Universe, and Argus Pacific, Inc.

http://vimeo.com/6169275�

http://twitter.com/semuni�

http://www.arguspacific.com/asbestos-regulations-manual/�


QUESTION YOUR AUTHORITY

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“Technologies always come along and challenge who and what we think we are, and the value of

what ‘experts’ do for us.” – Tony Ageh, Controller of Archive Development, BBC

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WHAT’S THE UNIQUE BUSINESS VALUE OF THE BRAND?

Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company‣ A shipping/mail delivery company

‣ Couldn’t compete with trains ‣ A ferry company

‣ Couldn’t compete with airplanes‣ A cruise company

‣ A small percentage of their earlier business

Is it about owning ships, or about transporting things? Transporting things, or people?

27Photo by Roger Marks

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rpmarks/2923346405/�



WHAT ROLE WILL THE EDITOR PLAY?

28Source: Bill on Capital Hill

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bwalsh/526226120/�



HOW VALUABLE IS THE CONTENT? TO WHOM?

‣ Expectation that digital content will be free

‣ Advertisers can’t reach the same audiences, because attention is to fragmented

‣ Ad budgets for traditional media are waning,

‣ Digital ad spend is on the rise, but slow

29

Internet spend compared with U.S. marketing spend.Dollars in billions. Source: ZenithOptimedia.com


WHERE DOES CONTENT RESIDE AND HOW DOES IT GET THERE?

30

In 2000 a digital publisher’s content ecosystem included a website, an RSS feed, and maybe an email newsletter.

In 2010 there are many more content channels to attend to.


WHERE DOES A BRAND FIND ITS AUDIENCE?

‣ People rely on ‣ trusted editorial sources‣ editorial aggregators‣ community aggregators‣ personal filters‣ social recommendations

‣ They still struggle‣ They still worry that they’re missing

something

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STRUCTURE SETS CONTENT FREE

Ironically, it’s more structure that makes content nimble and sets it free. Not the kind of blind structure that defines the layout of a web page, but tags that express the meaning and function of each individual element in a content item.

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STRUCTURED DATA

‣ Markup that provides more meaning and context

‣ Ad hoc and standard methods of adding structure

‣ Microformats

33

 This presentation was given on 2010-06-23at the Semantic Technology Conferencein San Francisco, California.


STRUCTURED DATA

‣ Standard methods of adding structure‣ Dublin Core – an ISO standard defining 15 common metadata elements‣ FOAF (Friend of a Friend) – relationships between people‣ RDF – a model for expressing metadata as triples‣ OWL – adds semantic meaning‣ SKOS – expresses structured controlled vocabularies, taxonomies

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UNIQUE IDS

‣ People can usually tell by context, but a machine needs a unique identifier to be able to make connections or distinctions

‣ Every person, place or thing has its own ID

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Bill Clinton = President William Jefferson Clinton

President Bush(George H. W.)

President Bush (George W.)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/George-W-Bush.jpeg�


ONE PAGE PER CONCEPT

‣ High SEO value‣ Aggregates content‣ Mapped to related data

36BBC © MMX


BBC MUSIC BETA – ARTISTS PAGES

37BBC © MMX


LINKED DATA

Image by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch

http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/�





BEYOND LAYOUT

‣ Tagging systems that express:‣ Usage – which get fed to the mobile app, what part gets extracted as a

tweet, which bits are sent to a Facebook page‣ Trust – source of information, and where they fit in your circle‣ Value & Entitlements - which parts are free for everyone, which parts are

premium, which are available only to mobile subscribers‣ Versioning – managing variations on content you already possess

39


APIS FOR CONTENT, DATA, AND FUNCTION

‣ Import data, content, and services

‣ Make content and data available for use by others

40Photo by Rishi Menon

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rxmflickr/4102530508/�






IMAGINE A NIMBLE WORLD

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THE EDITOR BECOMES A CURATOR

‣ Oversee living, growing nimble content and data.

‣ Create better experiences ongoing stories.

‣ Use archived content to add new context and meaning.

42


BLOGS KNOW THIS

43Copyright © 2010 bOING bOING and HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.


REACHING INTO THE ARCHIVES

44Source: Gizmodo

http://gizmodo.com/5456818/the-nytimes-review-of-the-original-apple-tablet-less-than-fulfilling�


LIVING STORIES

45© 2010 Google


RELATED CONTENT SERVICES

46© 2010 Time Inc.


RELATED CONTENT SERVICES

Example Services

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Apture Provides additional contextual information in multimedia pop-ups, drawn from places such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Flickr.

Evri Allows readers to browse articles, images, and videos related to the topic of an article or content element, and provides widgets for sidebars, posts and popovers.

Headup Provides contextually relevant material from social networks and web services.

NewsCred Augments content with related stories from 6000 top news sources, as well as topic pages and license-free photos.

Zemanta Suggests related content and pictures that editors can embed in articles or blog posts.

http://www.apture.com/�

http://www.evri.com/�

http://headup.com/about.php�

http://platform.newscred.com/�

http://www.zemanta.com/�


ADVANCED MEDIA MONITORING

48© 2010 Phase 2 Technology


ADVANCED MEDIA MONITORING

Example Services

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Imooty Tracks keywords and mentions of a brand, using a simple dashboard or by creating alerts, widgets, or RSS feeds.

Inbenta Follow the topics that people in your business are following.

Lexalytics Scans what’s being said in blogs, tweets and social media to provide sentiment analysis about companies, topics and current events.

Tattler Mines news, websites, blogs, multimedia sites, and social media to find mentions of topics or issues of interest to you.

http://www.imooty.eu/�

http://www.inbenta.com/�

http://www.lexalytics.com/�

http://tattlerapp.com/�


DEVELOP A PORTFOLIO OF REVENUE MODELS

‣ Paid Content‣ Advertising‣ Other Revenue‣ Reduce Costs

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PAID CONTENT: CONTENT AS A SERVICE

The value of content will lie in being able to provide a

desired product or service, not just the content itself.

51


ITUNES – 10 BILLION SONGS

52Copyright © 2010 Apple Inc.


WALL STREET JOURNAL

53Copyright ©2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.


NETFLIX

54© 2010 Netflix, inc.


MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

55© 2001-2010 MLB Advanced Media, L.P.


NEXT ISSUE MEDIA

56


SEMANTIC PUBLISHING TOOLS

‣ Add structure + metadata‣ Develop new products more

quickly & easily

57Screenshot © 2010 Thomson Reuters


SEMANTIC PUBLISHING TOOLS

Example Services

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OpenPublish A version of Drupal with OpenCalais machine assisted tagging and RDFa formatting built in.

Jiglu Insight Finds hidden relationships to other content you’ve published and automatically creates links.

http://drupal.org/project/openpublish�

http://www.jiglu.com/jiglu-insight/�


ONLINE ADVERTISING: LOOKING UP

Need to overcome the impression that online inventory is not valuable

59Source: eMarketer, May 2010

http://totalaccess.emarketer.com/Reports/Viewer.aspx?R=2000685�


ADVERTISING: RICH, RELEVANT, TARGETED

New opportunities for high-value advertising will

include unique approaches that use the digital content itself.

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MAD MEN AD WITH NYT CONTENT

61Source: The New York Times Corporation


INTEL AD ON CNET

62Source: ClickZ

http://www.clickz.com/3639838�


LOS ANGELES TIMES

‣ Front Page, Print Edition, March 5, 2010‣ Includes recent articles

63Copyright © 2010 Tribune Inc.


LOS ANGELES TIMES: GREEN LINKS

64Copyright © 2010 Tribune Inc.


ADVERTISING: TARGETED ADS

Ads that are contextually relevant to the content can be more engaging and ultimately

more effective.

65


SPONSORED RESULTS

66Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Inc.


BROAD MATCHING: TRAVEL

67Copyright © 2010 The New York Times Company


THEMATIC MATCHING: TRAVEL

68guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010


THEMATIC MATCHING: MUSIC & THEATER

69Copyright © 2000–2010 Time Out New York


SPONSORED LINKS: NAME MATCHING

70Copyright © 2010 Entertainment Weekly


MATCHING IS HIT OR MISS



ADVERTISING: POOR MATCHING

Automated keyword matching can lead to some unfortunate

associations, which tends to scare advertisers.

72


THE BRAND LOOKS SILLY

73Source: The New York Times

http://laughlines.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/unfortunate-ad-placement-2/�


THE BRAND MADE PEOPLE SICK

74Copyright © 2010 Reurers


ASSOCIATED WITH DISASTER

75Source: Pro PR

http://propr.ca/2009/google-ad-fail/�


PROMOTING A COMPETITOR



ADVERTISING: BRAND PROTECTION

Semantic ad targeting tools include protection against

unfortunate term-matching.

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SEMANTIC AD TARGETING

Example Services

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ad pepper Provides ad placement, lead generation and brand protection through semantic analysis of page content and user behavior.

Peer39 Understands the meaning and sentiment of web pages so that ads can be targeted to appropriate audiences, and also protects advertisers from having their campaigns placed on negative or objectionable content. Identifies hot topics on the fly, and quickly adapts to create new “premium” inventory.

Proximic Performs real-time content analysis to accurately target ads, builds user profiles for better audience targeting, and includes brand protection measures.

http://www.adpepper.com/�

http://www.peer39.com/�

http://www.proximic.com/�


OTHER SOURCES OF REVENUE

80Model by Scott Brinker

http://www.chiefmartec.com/2010/03/business-models-for-linked-data-and-web-30.html�


PARTNERING ON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

‣ Partner with developers who need a regular stream of high quality content to make their products useful.‣ Licensing Model. Provide content to partners in exchange for a fee.‣ Marketplace Model. Make content available to developers in exchange

for a portion of the revenue from products they develop.

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AFFILIATE PARTNERSHIP

‣ Incorporate affiliate links into the content. Partners can pay up front or share revenue they receive from traffic sent from the site.

82Copyright ©2010 Movies.com


VALUE-ADD APPROACH

‣ Offer free content that drives sales of paid services, products, or devices.

83Source: Betanews, Inc.

http://www.betanews.com/slideshow/xbox-360-user-interface/6/5�

http://www.betanews.com/slideshow/xbox-360-user-interface/6/5�


RICH DATA SERVICES

Example Services

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Factual An open data platform providing tools to enable anyone to contribute and use sources of structured data.

Freebase An open, semantically enhanced database of information, similar to Wikipedia, but with structured data on millions of topics in dozens of domains.

iGlue A community editable database containing images, video, individuals, institutions, and geographic locations.

http://www.factual.com/about�

http://www.freebase.com/�

http://www.iglue.com/�


REDUCE COSTS: DO MORE WITH LESS

‣ Follow the principle “produce once, use multiple times.”

‣ Use tools that help automate parts of the process.

‣ Make production processes more efficient so you can produce more content, in more formats, often with a smaller staff.

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“What [linked data] will let you do on the back end is pretty

revolutionary. It lets you answer questions, not that you couldn’t answer before, but [for which] it would have been way too hard to

collect, sanitize and curate the data.”

– Evan Sandhaus, Semantic Technologist, R&D Lab, The New York Times

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MACHINE-ASSISTED TAGGING

Example Services

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OpenCalais Automatically tags people, places, companies, facts and events found in the content.

TextWise Generates weighted, relevant metadata based on key concepts found in the text of a document or web page.

Tagaroo An OpenCalais plug-in for WordPress.

http://www.opencalais.com/�

http://www.textwise.com/�

http://tagaroo.opencalais.com/�


BECOME A CONTENT DISTRIBUTOR

‣ Channels

‣ Devices

‣ Platforms

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BE PREPARED

‣ Create unique modes of interaction and the optimal types of experiences for each platform

‣ Content must be nimble in order to:‣ reduce development time for current and next generation devices‣ anticipate the needs of platforms that don’t even exist yet‣ make everything seamlessly work together

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FIND YOUR AUDIENCE WHERE THEY ARE

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SEO GOES INTO OVERDRIVE

Yahoo, Google, and Bing have all begun using rich metadata embedded in pages to apply formatting for specific kinds of content and display useful information right in the results.

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SEMANTIC SEO

Example Services

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Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool

Tests webpage markup to ensure that Google’s Rich Snippets feature can interpret it correctly.

Inbenta Assists in the creation of content using the terminology of popular search queries.

Semantify(by Dapper)

Provides automated semantic enhancement of a site without changing its pages. Search engines see the site with RDFa tagging embedded in the page.

http://knol.google.com/k/google-rich-snippets-tips-and-tricks�



http://www.inbenta.com/�

http://www.dapper.net/semantify/�

http://www.dapper.net/semantify/�


STRUCTURED SERENDIPITYME + FRIENDS + COMMUNITY + EDITORS

‣ Tools that use all of these filters to help people manage their information streams

‣ Content has to play well in this environment

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“The old portal model has given way to a social model, and you

have to have your content threaded into that.”

– Martin Nisenholtz, SVP, Digital Operations, The New York Times


SOCIAL INFLUENCE: AUDIENCE AMBASSADORS

Pages should be properly structured, marked up, and tagged so that when that link shows up on Facebook it includes meaningful copy and imagery

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CONCLUSION

Successful publishers‣ Understand and harness the

relationship with their audience‣ Develop new, engaging products

for them‣ Provide content in a wide range

of formats, platforms, and experiences

‣ Invest in the emerging technologies that best align with their business strategies

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

‣ Research and Editorial Team‣ Christine Costello, Rachel Lovinger, Melissa Sepe

‣ Advisory Board‣ Eric Moore, Elliott Trice, Ray Velez, Domenic Venuto

‣ Art Director‣ Lian Chang

‣ Designed by‣ Chelsea Andrews

‣ Colleagues who gave valuable feedback and assistance‣ Bryan Hamilton, Michael Harper, Nick Heasman, Ruth Kaufman, Beth

Lind, Rupa Naipaul, Paul Tavernise

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THE DETAILS

‣ Available at: http://nimble.razorfish.com

‣ Follow us on Twitter: @NimbleRF

‣ Illustrations by Fogelson-Lubliner(http://fogelson-lubliner.com)

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http://nimble.razorfish.com/�

http://fogelson-lubliner.com/�


QUESTIONS?

[email protected]: @rlovinger

Nimble Twitter: @NimbleRFhttp://nimble.razorfish.com

http://scattergather.razorfish.com

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Semantics in Publishing & Media

Technology

Transcript of Semantics in Publishing & Media