A Social, Semantic BBC?
Simon Cross & Ben Smith
@sicross @thesmith
Futuresonic, Manchester, May 2009

A quick introduction to
the Semantic Web at the BBC

Linked Open Data Cloud

Linked Open Data Cloud

Linked Open Data Cloud

Linked Open Data Cloud

Linked Open Data Cloud

Linked Open Data Cloud

But the BBC has all this content.

...like loads of it.

How do people find it?

But what’s the best recommendation engine on the planet?

People

Its all about...
Social Discovery of Content

Part 1: Semantic Questions

Some typical Semantic Web examples...

“show me all the music artists born in
Germany on a Thursday who’ve had a
number one single in the last 20 years”

“show me the senators of the US Sentate
who’ve been to Harvard who have also
done an MBA”

“show me all the musicians who’ve had
number one singles in more than 15
countries with more than one band”

“Show me all the occurrences of a disease
in one country where somebody travelled
to that country from Mexico in the last 2
weeks”

“show me the rainfall in the constituencies
of all the current UK MPs who’ve claimed
for a moat, or a bathplug”

Ace! But what if I want you to...

“show me all the programmes my friends
have watched in the last week that I
haven't yet watched”

“show me all the news articles my friends
have bookmarked in the last month that
I’ve not yet read”

“show me which of my friends has
watched and listened to the same kinds of
programmes as me in the last 6 months”

“show me the radio programmes my
friends have listened to in the last week
that I have also listened to”

“show me the programmes, news stories,
sports stories and events I've rated that my
friends have rated very differently to me”

Wouldn’t that be the coolest way to discover new stuff?

Part 2: The Semantic User

So, there’s all that lovely linked data,
but do you have to build yet another social network?

http://daveman692.livejournal.com/341074.html

FOAF+SSL Distributed Social Networks

Great, but do you still have to:
‘CREATE TABLE users’?

Er, yes.
performance
scalability
provider lock-in
fair trading
assertions aren’t good enough
Users just don’t get it!

So how do you build social discovery,
without building a social network?

Develop on the Open Stack
Don’t try to own your user’s social graph
Authenticated links to social networks
rel=”me” and owl:sameAs

Can we answer the questions then?

“show me all the programmes my friends
have watched in the last week that I
haven't yet watched”

Er, No.

Part 3: Semantic Activities

We need to link Users to Content through Activity

It’s all about Nouns and Verbs

Nouns Verbs
watch
listen
read
comment
rate
share
follow
attend
...

Nouns Verbs
Users watch
Programmes listen
News Articles read
People comment
Places rate
Subjects share
Sports Teams follow
Festivals attend
... ...

Nouns Verbs
Users watch
Programmes listen
News Articles read
People comment
Places rate
Subjects share
Sports Teams follow
Festivals attend
... ...

“Simon watched Top Gear”

“Ben is going to Glastonbury”

“Rich listened to Radiohead”

http://rumplo.com/tees/tee/1141-im-so-adjective-i-verb-nouns

• OpenSocial Activities
• ActivitiyStrea.ms
• SOIC
• FOAF
• Event Ontology

Can we answer the questions then?

“show me all the programmes my friends
have watched in the last week that I
haven't yet watched”

Er,Yes, hopefully!

6 Steps to heaven if you too want to work this way...

1. Structure your data.

2. Publish as linked open data

3. Capture Activity (user interactions with your data)

4. Derive meaning from Activity and the Social Graph

5. Publish derivations back to the Users

6. Users find cooler, better, newer content

Thanks! Any Questions?