Data Portability with SIOC and FOAF

Data Portability with SIOC and FOAF Uldis Boj ā rs 1 , Alexandre Passant 2 , John Breslin 1 1 Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway 2 LaLIC, Université Paris-Sorbonne / Electricité de France R&D XTech 2008 Dublin, Ireland - 2008-05-09

What’s the problem and how to solve it ?

What if I use multiple services and I want to…

Merge my social networks between various websites

Invite my friends from a social media website to a new service I’ve just registered

Move the stuff I have on one service to another (e.g. move all my blog posts, comments, etc. from WordPress.com to “Acme Blogs”)

And more:

See my stuff on a third-party service providing an aggregate view, like FriendFeed, but in an open way

Archive and preserve my social media contributions

…

So many social media sites… * Source: Smashcut Media, www.smashcut-media.com

Even more services…

It takes a lot of time…

Filling out your profiles, re-adding your friends…

Uploading posts and content items to “stovepipes”!

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

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

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

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

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

Social networking fatigue

How many general or niche SNSs are you willing to register and / or interact with?

“ People are getting sick of registering and re-declaring their friends on every site ” Brad Fitzpatrick (Aug. 2007)

Need for a “social graph” with distributed social networks and reusable profiles

A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web (Sept. 07)

Ownership

Control

Freedom

The Semantic Web can help !

is

important !

Data Portability

Social network portability

User profiles

Social network relations

User-created content portability

Social media contributions

… and all other kinds of data portability needs that you can think of …

Social Network Portability with FOAF (Friend of a Friend)

The Semantic Web in brief

“ The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning , better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation ” - Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, Scientific American, May 2001

A common model to describe data in a machine-readable way:

RDF (Resource Description Framework)

RDF statements are triples (subject predicate object):

XTech2008 isA Conference .

XTech2008 takesPlaceIn Dublin .

Uldis isPresentingAt Xtech2008 .

RDF

Graph-based model for describing:

information about objects

relationships between them

Different mediums for expressing this knowledge:

RDF in XML, JSON, N3 (plain text)

Embedded: RDFa (in HTML)

Extractable using GRDDL (from Microformats, …)

RDF (II)

Large set of tools & libraries

All major programming languages

Standard query language

SPARQL (W3C Recommendation)

Interesting applications built on top of it

SPARQL interfaces to relational DBMSs

Reasoning / inference engines

Web of Linked Data

Vocabularies / Ontologies

Common semantic model for data, using ontologies:

“ An ontology is a specification of a conceptualisation” - Tom Gruber

RDFS (RDF Schema)

OWL (Web Ontology Language)

Lightweight Vocabularies are Good for You :)

FOAF, SIOC, DOAP

The Semantic Web FAQ:

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

Lightweight Ontologies

FOAF

Friend Of A Friend - http: //foaf-project .org

Used by Apple Safari, Google Social Graph API, …

DOAP

Description of A Proect - http://trac.usefulinc.com/doap

Used by Apache projects catalogue, …

Consumed by http://doapstore.org/ , …

SIOC

Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities

http://sioc-project.org

Generated by WordPress and other plugins, see: http://rdfs.org/sioc/applications/

The Semantic Web and Web 2.0

Semantic Web and Web 2.0 can benefit from each other to lead to a better Web, with social and machine-understandable data.

Many examples:

Vocabularies: FOAF to describe people, SIOC to describe their data

Semantic Wikis: Semantic MediaWiki, OntoWiki …

Revyu.com: A review website based on SW technologies

Tagging: The Tag Ontology, SCOT, MOAT

“ I think we could have both Semantic Web technology supporting online communities , but at the same time also online communities can support Semantic Web data by being the sources of people voluntarily connecting things together .” Tim Berners-Lee

Discovering the “invisible” web of data

“ Semantic Radar” extension for Firefox:

http://sioc-project.org/firefox

Easy to setup and use (Firefox extension, auto-update)

Support for RDFa!

Architecture of participation: just browse the Web

Discover Semantic Web documents using RDF autodiscovery links (a popular practice for advertising Atom/RSS and FOAF ):

<head>

<link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="http://example.com/people/~you/foaf.rdf"/>

</head>

RDF Browsers:

Tabulator, Disco, Zitgist, …

Representing people and their relationships

FOAF is the main vocabulary used to represent people:

Friend Of A Friend - http: //foaf-project .org

foaf:Person class:

“ The foaf:Person class represents people. Something is a foaf:Person if it is a person.”

Give yourself a URI:

http: //apassant . net/alex

Relationships = foaf:knows property

:John foaf:knows :Alex .

Enriching FOAF data

Extensions using the RELATIONSHIP vocabulary:

http: //vocab .org/relationship/

All rel:* properties are subproperties of foaf:knows

:John rel:worksWith :Uldis

RDFS inferencing allows tools to answer queries using foaf:knows when people use rel:* alternatives

Can mix together with information in many different vocabularies (as necessary):

DOAP (Description of a Project) - for software projects

SIOC - for user-created content

… .

Integrating social networks with FOAF Common formats, unique URIs Source: Sheila Kinsella, Applications of Social Network Analysis 2007

A common semantics for existing services

Existing FOAF exporters for Facebook, Flickr, Twitter…

Run unified queries using SPARQL

Social Network data from multiple sources

Flickr: http://apassant.net/home/2007/12/flickrdf/data/people/33669349@N00

Twitter: http://tools.opiumfield.com/twitter/terraces/rdf

FaceBook: http://ext.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~u0057/FoafGenerator/files/foaf-607513040.rdf

Some more FOAF

LiveJournal

MyBlogLog

http://kentbrewster.com/foafster/

CPAN Net::Flickr::Backup

http://search.cpan.org/dist/Net-Flickr-Backup-1.2/lib/Net/Flickr/Backup.pm

Pownce

… .

Identity management across networks

A need to unify URIs from different services so as to represent one's unified identity. Linked-data principles are to use owl:sameAs and rdfs:seeAlso:

See: http://www4. wiwiss . fu-berlin . de/bizer/pub/LinkedDataTutorial/

owl:sameAs: Used to identify two resources with different URIs as being the same resource

:alex owlSameAs flickr:33669349@N00 .

rdfs:seeAlso: “More information about this resource can be found here”, can be used by Semantic Web tools such as Tabulator

http://apassant.net/blog/2008/01/12/one-foaf-fits-all/

Inference using owl:InverseFunctionalProperty:

foaf:mbox, foaf:openid, etc. can be used to identify uniqueness for a foaf:Person

Unifying aspects of a foaf:Person across networks:

All relevant relationships are related to one foaf:Person

Social Network unification

Distributed social networking with FOAF

Applications for browsing the social (semantic) graph

FOAFnaut, FOAF Explorer, etc.

FOAFGear: thanks to common semantics, only 100 lines of code: http: //apassant .net/home/2008/01/foafgear/

Semantic social networks tools and services

Browse / re-use your social graph in personal applications

Merge identities with pre-defined rules

Tools:

Beatnik

Knowee

SPARQLpress

Nepomuk

Combining FOAF and OpenID

Link to your FOAF profile from your OpenID URL, so that services can get your machine-readable profile when you log-in:

<head><link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="foaf.rdf" /></head>

FOAF + OpenID Scenario

Bob creates an account on Networkr, a new social networking website, using OpenID

Networkr retrieves the FOAF URI thanks to an auto-discovery link

From the FOAF file, it identifies if there are any people already subscribed to Networkr who are listed in Bob’s defined relationships

If that is the case, Bob can add them as “local connections”, share data with them, etc. without having to once again search for / add his friends

Specific rules:

If I know X from Flickr, he / she can see my pictures on Networkr

Data Portability = SIOC + FOAF

Social Media Contributions

Lots of user-created content posted on the Web:

Blog posts, wiki pages, bulletin board threads

Called « Social Media Contributions » or SMC

Distributed content

Blogging platform, photos-sharing website, social bookmarking service ….

A need for common semantics to

Provide a single model for any SMC, wherever it comes from

Enables the use of SPARQL queries instead of proprietary APIs

Interlink data and find relationships between content

From documents to resources, from WWW to GGG

SIOC

(pron. as “shock”)

SIOC

Social Web + Semantic Web

Vocabulary for expressing the Social Web (user-created content) on the Semantic Web (web of data)

Modeling Social Media Contributions

SIOC - Semantically-Interlinked Social Communities

http: //sioc-project .org

A vocabulary to represent the activities of online communities

More than 40 applications, mainly open-source

W3C Member Submission, June 2007

http://www.w3.org/Submission/2007/02/

Namespace: http: //rdfs . org/sioc/ns

Five top-level classes:

User / Role / Space / Container / Item

Items, created by User(s), organized in Containers

The SIOC ontology

The main classes and properties are:

Connecting people and their user accounts

The sioc:User class:

Can be thought of as a virtual representation of any person online, within the context of a given social media website or community

A subclass of foaf:OnlineAccount

foaf:holdsAccount property:

“ The foaf:holdsAccount property relates a foaf:Agent to a foaf:OnlineAccount for which they are the sole account holder.”

Links a foaf:Person to various sioc:User(s)

As many sioc:User(s) as required can be linked to a single person

One people, various identities

Users create and manage content:

has_creator and has_modifier properties

:blogpost123 sioc:has_creator :john

A person and their user accounts

+ SKOS for topics and categories

Interlinking using common categories:

Share tags and topics across different content

SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organisation System):

http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/

A vocabulary to describe controlled vocabularies

Used in the “Tag Ontology”: http://www. holygoat .co. uk/projects/tags/

Interlinking content with SKOS

skos:isSubjectOf

sioc:topic

Interlinking content items

Can create direct links between instances of sioc:Item:

Link from a blog post to a bulletin board page

sioc:related_to, sioc:links_to

Interlinking using common categories:

SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organisation System):

http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/

Interlink using existing URIs as topics:

geonames.org, DBpedia, Revyu

MOAT (Meaning of a Tag) simplifies linking content to such URIs:

http://moat-project.org/

Producing SW d ata from s ocial m edia s ites

We can use SIOC as a common framework / data model for expressing s ocial m edia data on the Semantic Web

The “ SIOC Types ” module:

Additional classes and properties for expressing different kinds of s ocial m edia / Web 2.0 content

Connects SIOC with domain-specific ontologies

Reus e existing ontologies:

Dublin Core, FOAF, SKOS, etc.

SIOC d ata p roducers

SIOC a pplications l ist :

http://rdfs.org/sioc/applications/

> 20 a pplications for p roducing SIOC d ata :

F ree and o pen s ource

SIOC e xport t ools for:

Blogs and forums: WordPress, phpBB, Drupal, b2evolution

“ Legacy” applications: m ailing lists, IRC

New media: Twitter, Jaiku , Facebook, Flickr

Enterprise applications: CWE (collaborative work environments)

Case studies

WordPress SIOC exporter:

http://sioc-project.org/wordpress

First SIOC plugin created, custom built

vBulletin and phpBB SIOC exporters:

http://wiki.sioc-project.org/index.php/VBSIOC

http://sioc-project.org/phpbb

Uses SIOC API for PHP

Overview of WordPress SIOC exporter

Installation:

Download from http://sioc-project.org/wordpress

“ Drop” two files into the WordPress plugins folder

Go to the administrator’s user interface

Plugins -> SIOC Plugin -> “Activate”

SIOC data created for every page:

Data describing all blog posts, comments, users, etc.

SIOC data can be discovered via RDF autodiscovery links:

<link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="SIOC" href="http://www.johnbreslin.com/blog/index.php?sioc_type=site" />

Data can be explored or crawled using existing Semantic Web applications

Sample export of SIOC data from WordPress

RDF data from the WordPress export plugin, displayed in the SIOC Browser

SIOC export APIs

Benefits:

Hides the complexity from application developers

Can be used by people who are not Semantic Web experts

Automatically updated according to changes in the SIOC ontology and best practices documents

Existing SIOC APIs:

Java

Perl (new!)

PHP (most used)

RDFa on Rails

See “2.1 SIOC APIs” in http://rdfs.org/sioc/applications/

Using SIOC and FOAF to represent portable data

WordPress SIOC Import plugin

http://wiki.sioc-project.org/w/SIOC_Import_Plugin

see the wiki for a detailed information

Download, unzip, activate

Import some data (Admin -> Options -> SIOC Import)

SIOC data (external) from http://johnbreslin.com/blog/

SIOC data (embedded RDFa) from http://www.wikier.org/blog/talk-in-deri#post

Moving SIOC data between sites

Importing SIOC data is easy:

Parse SIOC RDF data (e.g. using ARC2 or RAP for PHP)

Convert SIOC data to the content model of the target system :

e.g. content and other properties of blog posts and comments

Store data in the target application :

T he most difficult part 

Wordpress plugin

How can you use and extend it?

Horizontal scaling

Import / copy / move whole sites

More intelligent import

Matching categories, users to those already on the site

Combine with messaging / pubsub

Use RDF (SIOC+FOAF+…) for data transferred via XMPP

How would you use it?

This demo was just a proof-of-concept

More exciting use cases are ahead

Summary

Data portability is an important issue

Many networks, many friends, many contributions

Distributed in proprietary data silos

Open up the silos, open your data

Use standards API and languages to get your data

SIOC + FOAF = a part of the Data Portability toolbox

Combination of open, lightweight data formats

Extensible with domain specific ontologies

Linked Data

Future Events

Scripting for the Semantic Web (SFSW 2008)

Workshop with many interesting contributions

Full papers already available online

E.g., “Microblogging: A Semantic Web and Distributed Approach”

Date / Location: June 2008 - Tenerife, Spain

http://www.semanticscripting.org/SFSW2008/

Social Data on the Web (SDoW 2008)

Workshop combining the Social Web and Semantic Web

Awaiting contributions, paper submission open

Date / Location: October 2008 - Karlsruhe, Germany

http://sdow2008.semanticweb.org/

Towards a Social Semantic Web !

Vocabularies and tools (APIs, producers…) already exist

http://esw.w3.org/topic/SemanticWebTools

http://sioc-project.org/applications

There must be something you can use

Join us and contribute !

#sioc on irc.freenode.net

sioc-dev on google-groups http://groups.google.com/group/sioc-dev

Contacts

Uldis Boj ā rs

[email_address] // http://captsolo.net/info/

Alexandre Passant

[email_address] // http://apassant.net

John Breslin

[email_address] // http://johnbreslin.com

Thanks to:

Dan Brickley (FOAF) for his valuable comments

Tuuka Hastrup and Thomas Schandl for work on evolving the SIOC Import plugin

Data Portability with SIOC and FOAF

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