The social semantic web

The Social Web (including services such as MySpace, Flickr, last.fm, and WordPress) has captured the attention of millions of users as well as billions of dollars in investment and acquisition. Social websites, evolving around the connections between people and their objects of interest, are encountering boundaries in the areas of information integration, dissemination, reuse, portability, searchability, automation and demanding tasks like querying. The Semantic Web is an ideal platform for interlinking and performing operations on diverse person- and object-related data available from the Social Web, and has produced a variety of approaches to overcome the boundaries being experienced in Social Web application areas.

After a short overview of both the Social Web and the Semantic Web, Breslin et al. describe some popular social media and social networking applications, list their strengths and limitations, and describe some applications of Semantic Web technology to address their current shortcomings by enhancing them with semantics. Across these social websites, they demonstrate a twofold approach for interconnecting the islands that are social websites with semantic technologies, and for powering semantic applications with rich community-created content. They conclude with observations on how the application of Semantic Web technologies to the Social Web is leading towards the "Social Semantic Web" (sometimes also called "Web 3.0"), forming a network of interlinked and semantically-rich content and knowledge.

The book is intended for computer science professionals, researchers, and graduates interested in understanding the technologies and research issues involved in applying Semantic Web technologies to social software. Practitioners and developers interested in applications such as blogs, social networks or wikis will also learn about methods for increasing the levels of automation in these forms of Web communication.

• 1 Introduction to the book p. 1
• 1.1 Overview p. 1
• 1.2 Aims of the book, and who will benefit from it? p. 3
• 1.3 Structure of the book p. 4
• 1.3.1 Motivation for applying Semantic Web technologies to the Social Web p. 5
• 1.3.2 Introduction to the Social Web (Web 2.0, social media, social software) p. 5
• 1.3.3 Adding semantics to the Web p. 6
• 1.3.4 Discussions p. 6
• 1.3.5 Knowledge and information sharing p. 6
• 1.3.6 Multimedia sharing p. 7
• 1.3.7 Social tagging p. 7
• 1.3.8 Social sharing of software p. 7
• 1.3.9 Social networks p. 8
• 1.3.10 Interlinking online communities p. 8
• 1.3.11 Social Web applications in enterprise p. 8
• 1.3.12 Towards the Social Semantic Web p. 9
• 2 Motivation for applying Semantic Web technologies to the Social Web p. 11
• 2.1 Web 2.0 and the Social Web p. 11
• 2.2 Addressing limitations in the Social Web with semantics p. 13
• 2.3 The Social Semantic Web: more than the sum of its parts p. 15
• 2.4 A food chain of applications for the Social Semantic Web p. 17
• 2.5 A practical Social Semantic Web p. 19
• 3 Introduction to the Social Web (Web 2.0, social media, social software) p. 21
• 3.1 from the Web to a Social Web p. 21
• 3.2 Common technologies and trends p. 25
• 3.2.1 RSS p. 25
• 3.2.2 AJAX p. 27
• 3.2.3 Mashups p. 28
• 3.2.4 Advertising p. 30
• 3.2.5 The Web on any device p. 32
• 3.2.6 Content delivery p. 34
• 3.2.7 Cloud computing p. 35
• 3.2.8 Folksonomies p. 38
• 3.3 Object-centred sociality p. 39
• 3.4 Licensing content p. 42
• 3.5 Be careful before you post p. 42
• 3.6 Disconnects in the Social Web p. 44
• 4 Adding semantics to the Web p. 45
• 4.1 A brief history p. 45
• 4.2 The need for semantics p. 47
• 4.3 Metadata p. 51
• 4.3.1 Resource Description Framework (RDF) p. 52
• 4.3.2 The RDF syntax p. 54
• 4.4 Ontologies p. 56
• 4.4.1 RDF Schema p. 59
• 4.4.2 Web Ontology Language (OWL) p. 61
• 4.5 SPARQL p. 62
• 4.6 The 'lowercase' semantic web, including microformats p. 64
• 4.7 Semantic search p. 66
• 4.8 Linking Open Data p. 67
• 4.9 Semantic mashups p. 69
• 4.10 Addressing the Semantic Web 'chicken-and-egg' problem p. 71
• 5 Discussions p. 75
• 5.1 The world of boards, blogs and now microblogs p. 75
• 5.2 Blogging p. 76
• 5.2.1 The growth of blogs p. 77
• 5.2.2 Structured blogging p. 79
• 5.2.3 Semantic blogging p. 81
• 5.3 Microblogging p. 85
• 5.3.1 The Twitter phenomenon p. 88
• 5.3.2 Semantic microblogging p. 89
• 5.4 Message boards p. 91
• 5.4.1 Categories and tags on message boards p. 92
• 5.4.2 Characteristics of forums p. 94
• 5.4.3 Social networks on message boards p. 97
• 5.5 Mailing lists and IRC p. 100
• 6 Knowledge and information sharing p. 103
• 6.1 Wikis p. 103
• 6.1.1 The Wikipedia p. 105
• 6.1.2 Semantic wikis p. 105
• 6.1.3 DBpedia p. 110
• 6.1.4 Semantics-based reputation in the Wikipedia p. 111
• 6.2 Other knowledge services leveraging semantics p. 112
• 6.2.1 Twine p. 112
• 6.2.2 The Internet Archive p. 115
• 6.2.3 Powerset p. 117
• 6.2.4 OpenLink Data Spaces p. 119
• 6.2.5 Freebase p. 119
• 7 Multimedia sharing p. 121
• 7.1 Multimedia management p. 121
• 7.2 Photo-sharing services p. 122
• 7.2.1 Modelling RDF data from Flickr p. 123
• 7.2.3 Annotating images using Semantic Web technologies p. 125
• 7.3 Podcasts p. 126
• 7.3.1 Audio podcasts p. 127
• 7.3.2 Video podcasts p. 129
• 7.3.3 Adding semantics to podcasts p. 131
• 7.4 Music-related content p. 133
• 7.4.1 DBTune and the Music Ontology p. 133
• 7.4.2 Combining social music and the Semantic Web p. 134
• 8 Social tagging p. 137
• 8.1 Tags, tagging and folksonomies p. 137
• 8.1.1 Overview of tagging p. 137
• 8.1.2 Issues with free-form tagging systems p. 140
• 8.2 Tags and the Semantic Web p. 142
• 8.2.1 Mining taxonomies and ontologies from folksonomies p. 143
• 8.2.2 Modelling folksonomies using Semantic Web technologies p. 144
• 8.3 Tagging applications using Semantic Web technologies p. 148
• 8.3.1 Annotea p. 148
• 8.3.2 Revyu.com p. 149
• 8.3.3 SweetWiki p. 151
• 8.3.4 int.ere.st p. 151
• 8.3.5 LODr p. 152
• 8.3.6 Atom Interface p. 153
• 8.3.7 Faviki p. 154
• 8.4 Advanced querying capabilities thanks to semantic tagging p. 155
• 8.4.1 Show items with the tag 'semanticweb' on any platform p. 155
• 8.4.2 List the ten latest items tagged by Alexandre on SlideShare p. 155
• 8.4.3 List the tags used by Alex on SlideShare and by John on Flickr p. 157
• 8.4.4 Retrieve any content tagged with something relevant to the Semantic Web field p. 158
• 9 Social sharing of software p. 159
• 9.1 Software widgets, applications and projects p. 159
• 9.2 Description of a Project (DOAP) p. 160
• 9.2.1 Examples of DOAP use p. 161
• 9.3 Crawling and browsing software descriptions p. 164
• 9.4 Querying project descriptions and related data p. 166
• 9.4.1 Locating software projects from people you trust p. 166
• 9.4.2 Locating a software project related to a particular topic p. 167
• 10 Social networks p. 169
• 10.1 Overview of social networks p. 169
• 10.2 Online social networking services p. 173
• 10.3 Some psychology behind SNS usage p. 175
• 10.4 Niche social networks p. 177
• 10.5 Addressing some limitations of social networks p. 179
• 10.6 Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF) p. 181
• 10.6.1 Consolidation of people objects p. 184
• 10.6.2 Aggregating a person's web contributions p. 186
• 10.6.3 Inferring relationships from aggregated data p. 187
• 10.7 hCard and XFN p. 189
• 10.8 The Social Graph API and OpenSocial p. 190
• 10.8.1 The Social Graph API p. 190
• 10.8.2 OpenSocial p. 192
• 10.9 The Facebook Platform p. 193
• 10.10 Some social networking initiatives from the W3C p. 194
• 10.11 A social networking stack p. 194
• 11 Interlinking online communities p. 197
• 11.1 The need for semantics in online communities p. 197
• 11.2 Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC) p. 198
• 11.2.1 The SIOC ontology p. 201
• 11.2.2 SIOC metadata format p. 203
• 11.2.3 SIOC modules p. 205
• 11.3 Expert finding in online communities p. 206
• 11.3.1 FOAF for expert finding p. 208
• 11.3.2 SIOC for expert finding p. 209
• 11.4 Connections between community description formats p. 211
• 11.5 Distributed conversations and channels p. 212
• 11.6 SIOC applications p. 215
• 11.7 A food chain for SIOC data p. 216
• 11.7.1 SIOC producers p. 218
• 11.7.2 SIOC collectors p. 223
• 11.7.3 SIOC consumers p. 224
• 11.8 RDFa for interlinking online communities p. 231
• 11.9 Argumentative discussions in online communities p. 234
• 11.10 Object-centred sociality in online communities p. 236
• 11.11 Data portability in online communities p. 238
• 11.11.1 The DataPortability working group p. 238
• 11.11.2 Data portability with FOAF and SIOC p. 240
• 11.11.3 Connections between portability efforts p. 241
• 11.12 Online communities for health care and life sciences p. 242
• 11.12.1 Semantic Web Applications in Neuromedicine p. 243
• 11.12.2 Science Collaboration Framework p. 244
• 11.12.3 bio-zen and the art of scientific community maintenance p. 246
• 11.13 Online presence p. 246
• 11.14 Online attention p. 247
• 11.15 The SIOC data competition p. 247
• 12 Social Web applications in enterprise p. 251
• 12.1 Overview of Enterprise 2.0 p. 251
• 12.2 Issues with Enterprise 2.0 p. 255
• 12.2.1 Social and philosophical issues with Enterprise 2.0 p. 255
• 12.2.1 Technical issues with Enterprise 2.0 p. 258
• 12.3 Improving Enterprise 2.0 ecosystems with semantic technologies p. 262
• 12.3.1 Introducing SemSLATES p. 262
• 12.3.2 Implementing semantics in Enterprise 2.0 ecosystems p. 263
• 12.3.3 SIOC for collaborative work environments p. 266
• 13 Towards the Social Semantic Web p. 269
• 13.1 Possibilities for the Social Semantic Web p. 269
• 13.2 A community-guided Social Semantic Web p. 271
• 13.2.1 Wisdom of the crowds and the Semantic Web p. 272
• 13.2.2 A grassroots approach p. 273
• 13.2.3 The vocabulary onion p. 275
• 13.3 Integrating with the Social Semantic Desktop p. 278
• 13.4 Privacy and identity on the Social Semantic Web p. 279
• 13.4.1 Keeping privacy in mind p. 279
• 13.4.2 Identity fragmentation p. 280
• 13.5 The vision of a Social Semantic Web p. 281
• Acknowledgments p. 285
• Dedication from John p. 287
• Biographies p. 289
• References p. 291