Semantic Microblogging

Semantic Microblogging Benjamin Nowack bnode.org / semsol.com

Cementic? Symantec?

Semantics = Meaning

A web where computers can (better) understand what a page is about ... The Semantic Web

… and where they can then do more without our help. Not necessarily complex stuff.

Add this event to my calendar!
Generate an album from (only) the photos in this Activity Stream!
List all #mbc09 Twitter and Identi.ca users who share a friend with me!
What are the most popular links about microblogging on Twitter?
Auto-block all followers with „SEO“ or “Social Media Expert” in their profile!

Evolution, not Revolution! (A semantic web could enable revolutionary new apps, though)

A little semantics ...
<title>
PageRank
rel=alternate
Tags
RSS

We're slowly increasing the content granularity on the web
HTML
CSS
microformats
RDF / RDFa
...

… moving from documents and links t o (arbitrary) things and their relations .

The “How” is a huge puzzle, though
Creation (NLP, annotations, wrappers, ...)
Publication (embedded, separate, API, formats, ...)
Discovery (centralized, decentralized, push, pull, ...)
Access / Privacy
Integration / Repurposing

Bringing microblogging into the SemWeb play (and the other way round).

Creating content for the semantic web is often cumbersome.

Writing microposts is easy and fun.

Microblogs mash short-term, social chatter with long-term-useful information.

Microblogging improves and accelerates product development, PR, and CRM (but lacks reporting/controlling) .

Microblog streams are the biggest productivity killer since IM and email notifications.

SemWeb technology enables self-describing content, querying, custom filtering, and automation.

The semantic web still doesn't have easy input UIs for everyday use.

Microblogging clients are becoming ubiquitous.

The semantic web uses small units to encode information. Subject > Predicate > Object Thing > Key > Value ID > Verb > Object … MBC09 > location > Hamburg

Microbloggers use short posts to encode information.

Microblogs are flexible
Life / Work logging
Conversations
Note taking
Announcements / CRM
Bookmarking & Tagging
Interest tracking

Microblogs are not fully Enterprise 2.0-ready yet
No long-term archives or backups
No granular privacy settings
No project-oriented interfaces
No DB-like filtering or querying
No integration of external data

A solution

Let's use microblogs to create structured content on the fly. Get rich filtering of “information streams” in return.

A semantic microblog
simplifies the creation of machine-readable information
„ knows“ what posts are about
enables task-specific interaction methods
helps with repetitive processes

The structure-to-opacity ratio in µPosts is already very high @joe, the new #release is out: http://bit.ly/123 by alec on 2009-01-24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RT @sue: I can #offer a #ride from #Berlin to the #mbc09 in #Hamburg by alec on 2009-01-24 author, @recipient, @persons, #hashtags, date, content, URLs (even without hashtags!)

What if we could do: @joe, the new #release is out: http://bit.ly/123 (#version=RC2 #fix=bug27 #_2h #_billable) by alec on 2009-01-24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attended great #talk by #seesmic's @kaotisch (#topic=xmpp #event=mbc09 ****) by alec on 2009-01-24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RT @sue: I can #offer a #ride to the #mbc09 #from=Berlin #to=Hamburg by alec on 2009-01-23 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Arrived at #mbc09 (#location=Hamburg) by alec on 2009-01-23

… something magic happens...

… and my microblog could then
tell me which countries I’ve been to this year
filter posts by tag
filter by machine tag key and/or value
generate software release notes
generate project reports (or even invoices)
recommend links or experts for some topic
Provide a query API

The challenge

Finding the sweet spot between simplicity and added value
Syntax patterns should evolve slowly, and in a bottom-up way
Re-use existing patterns (#tag, @person, to:group, ...)
UIs will need slight improvements (machine tag suggestions, filters, ...)

Prototypes, Demos, Experiments

SMOB
smob.sioc-project.org
maintained by DERI Galway
source available
tag disambiguation via RDF
#geo:Paris, #dbpedia:France
SPARQL API

HD Streams
fun experiment
feed subscriptions based on seed tags
twitter, identi.ca, ma.gnolia, delicious
(hash)tag extraction
entity extraction via NLP APIs (OpenCalais, Zemanta)
entity expansion via dbpedia, freebase, crunchbase
faceted entity browsing (just a crappy proof of concept)
SPARQL API
http://bnode.org/blog/2009/01/16/connecting-the-lod-dots-with-calais-4-0-and-zemanta

HD Streams

Smesher
semantic microblogging client with local storage
twitter / identi.ca integration
structure detection / extraction
hash tags, machine tags (#foo=bar), private tags (#_foo)
Re-tweets (leading RT), private posts (leading PP)
@recipient, @person
Ratings (e.g. ****)
URLs (expanded)
simple dashboard for custom lists and filters
SPARQL API
source going to be made available at smesher.org and through a devx.com article

Smesher

Smesher (SPARQL API)

http://www.chiefmartec.com	444
http://smesher.org	277
http://bnode.org	198
http://smesher.com	151
http://semanticweb30.wordpress.com	118
http://ejang.net	44
http://www.ejang.net	28
http://www.bnode.org	27
http://www.slideshare.net	21
http://planetrdf.com	21
http://ejang.tistory.com	19
http://moonston.blogspot.com	11
http://chiefmartec.com	9
http://blog.gokcebulbul.com	9
http://aleksandarbasara.com	6
http://www.e-presentations.us	4
http://www.smesher.com	3
http://translate.yandex.net	2
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	2
http://emmeesse.wordpress.com	1
http://www.tumblr.com	1
http://tumblr.codegent.com	1
http://lj-toys.com	1
http://moonston.blogspot.tw	1

Semantic Microblogging

by Benjamin Nowack

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