Web2.0 and KM
=
KM2.0
Paolo Massa
http://gnuband.org

GOAL
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Not a presentation of my work
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But convey some trends you might not know:
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Food for thought
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Goal: brainstorming about how and if we can
approach these topics from a research point of view
about Knowledge Management

“I worked on this theory and we might verify it here”

“what about combining X and Y?”
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So, INTERRUPT ME AND WE DISCUSS!

You!
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Read a blog? Write a blog?
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Know what RSS is? Use a news (RSS) reader?
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Know what Microformats are?
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Know what a wiki is? Write on a wiki (at least once)?
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Know what del.icio.us is? Use del.icio.us? Citeulike?
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Know what Flickr.com is? Use Flickr.com?
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Know what a folksonomy is?
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Use Facebook, MySpace, Orkut ... or similar? Linkedin?

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If I say something obvious, tell me to move on!

Topics
1. social development of folksonomies/taxonomies
(del.icio.us, flickr, citeulike, connotea, penntags, ...),
tags, tag clouds
2. wikis as collaborative environments for knowledge
creation and management
3.[NOT TODAY] social networks (+blogs) and
related data representation and manipulation
(Microformats, RSS, ATOM, API, Mashups, ...)

Collective Knowledge
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Underline assumption:
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Knowledge production and management does not
happen inside one person.
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It happens when there are many persons.
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It happens “between” the persons.

Web2.0 ?!?
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Term proposed by O'Reilly
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Very controversial and fuzzy
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http://www.google.it/search?q=web2.0
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Results: about 33,800,000 Websites for web2.0.

aaa
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http://www.google.it/search?q=web2.0

Web2.what?!?

Warning: the presentation is buzzwords­plenty! ;­)

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/03/the_new_geek_sp.html

Web2.0 and KM
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For the purpose of KM, Web2.0 key feature:
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Users participation (architecture of participation)
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Users add value (wikipedia, del.icio.us, flickr, digg,
youtube, free software/open source, blogs, ... readwrite
web ... cornucopia of the commons, wisdom of the
crowds, ...)

Topics
1. social development of folksonomies/taxonomies
(del.icio.us, flickr, citeulike, connotea,
penntags, ...), tags, tag clouds
2. wikis as collaborative environments for knowledge
creation and management
3. social networks (+blogs) and related data
representation and manipulation (Microformats,
RSS, ATOM, API, Mashups, ...)

Bookmarking is so Web1.0

From personal bookmarking ...

Del.icio.us
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... to social booksmarking

Del.icio.us (2)
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A small difference (bookmarks are public by default)
made a huge difference!
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You can be informed of what your “friends” (people you
trust and admire) bookmark!
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You can see what is popular at the moment!
Image from http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=512

How knowledge is managed on delicious
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Tags: free text!
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Not use trees of concepts, but flat categorization (easier)

Find what other users tagged as “africa”

Flat vs tree
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don't care about “which africa” or where africa is
placed in (my) tree of concepts
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flat = cognitively easier
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very messy, overloading, ambiguous, fuzzy, spam
but works well enough, now.

disambiguating between apple (fruit,computer,ny) is not
hard
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/apple/clusters/

Tags
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Users contribution is a must! Simplicity is key!
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Folksonomy (flat strings, no structure).

Before there was taxonomy (Yahoo!)

‘ Other users who bookmarked this same link
•
– Leads to users who are doing similar things ((

discovery)
– They also gave other tags to this link ((

increasing semantic field)
– They bookmarked other links (( inspiration)


Folksonomies: more examples
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Flickr (photos)
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Connotea, citeulike, penntag (scientific papers)
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taggato (resources of comune di Torino)
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youtube (videos)
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last.fm (songs, musicians, ...)

TAG CLOUD!

Folksonomy
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Taxonomy created by the people (folk)
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Must read!
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Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags
http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html
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Folksonomies: power to the people (emanuel quintarelli)

Folksonomy / Taxonomy
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tags evolve and represent what matters to people
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fbk? dkm_at_fbk? web3.0? toread? me?
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These data are easily available (API)
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Opportunities for research: DISCUSS!
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Verify on real data if a certain theory are true or useful.

Similarity with common taxonomies? Different words?
Different synonyms? Evolution? Logic? Properties?
Ontology generation? Knowledge adoption/diffusion?
Social network (who follows whom)? Recommendations
(“for:phauly”) of items or users?

Topics (2)
1. social development of folksonomies/taxonomies
(del.icio.us, flickr, citeulike, connotea, penntags, ...),
tags, tag clouds
2. wikis as collaborative environments for
knowledge creation and management
3. social networks (+blogs) and related data
representation and manipulation (Microformats,
RSS, ATOM, API, Mashups, ...)

Wikipedia

User­contributed encyclopedia. Everyone can create new
concepts or edit old ones!!!
Would have you
bet on this
mechanism 5
years ago?
Revisit “what
is possible”
and “what not”.
Users
contribution!
Like free
software but
for content!
Image from http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=512

Neutral Point of View
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An interesting Knowledges challenge: “can we all (!)
agree on the meanings of words?”
Edit wars are
extremely
insightful!
Have a look at the
“history” page to
see users
contributions
Image from http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=512

Wikis: opportunity for reseach
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It is extremely easy to get data from (media)wikis.
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http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Export
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Wikimania2008 conference. Alexandria,Egypt
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_in_ac
ademic_studies
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Warning: lot of very fresh research! Difficult to
understand what is already there. If possible better
work on your own wiki!

Wikis: opportunity for reseach.

Theories to test on it? DISCUSS!
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Trustlet: analyze the relationships between users (edit wars, messages,
co­editing, contributions, ...)
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Structure of categories: taxonomy? Ontology creation? Semantic Web
wiki?

Network of pages: sim/diff with wordnet and other less participative
approaches? Extract concept similarity from net?
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How knowledge gets created (who first starts a page, who polishes it,
who wikifies it, who adds links, ....)
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Experts vs Amateurs (Citizendium / Wikipedia)
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Neutral point of view? Edit wars? How reach consensus?

Trends? Evolution in time?

Topics
1. social development of folksonomies/taxonomies
(del.icio.us, flickr, citeulike, connotea, penntags, ...),
tags, tag clouds
2. wikis as collaborative environments for knowledge
creation and management
3. social networks (+blogs) and related data
representation and manipulation (Microformats,
RSS, ATOM, API, Mashups, ...)

Microformats
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a set of simple open data format standards that many (including
Technorati) are actively developing and implementing for
more/better structured blogging and web microcontent
publishing in general.

a way of thinking about data
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adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns (\"Pave the cow
paths.\" ­ Adam Rifkin
http://ifindkarma.typepad.com/relax/2004/12/microformats.html
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AKA lowercase semantic web, AKA lossless XHTML
http://microformats.org

Microformat principles
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* solve a specific problem
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* start as simple as possible
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solve simpler problems first, make evolutionary improvements
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* design for humans first, machines second
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be presentable and parsable
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visible data is better than invisible metadata
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adapt to current behaviors and usage patterns, e.g. (X)HTML, blogging
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* reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards
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semantic (X)HTML
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* modularity / embeddability
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design to be reused and embedded inside existing formats and microformats
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* enable and encourage decentralized and distributed development, content, services

Strength of microformats
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* Microformats are limited in scope by design
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* The goal is always to create a simple solution to
a narrowly defined problem
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* Anyone can create a microformat
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* Creation, evolution, adoption, and iteration
happen on very short time scales
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* Conflict is possible, is not inevitable, can be
constructive

Microformats
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* hCalendar (Calendars and Events)
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* hCard (People and Organizations)
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* RelLicense (Licenses)
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* RelNoFollow (Robots Exclusion)
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* RelTag (Tags, Keywords, Categories)
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* XFN (Social Networks)
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* XMDP (http://gmpg.org/xmdp/)
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* XOXO (Lists and Outlines)

XFM=Xhtml Friend Network
●
Microformats formalize existing practice, rather
than establish new practices
●
●
Bloggers have long been linking to other blogs,
and treating destination blogs as a
representation of the person who created that
blog.

XFM=Xhtml Friend Network
(examples)
●
As an example, we all could say:
●
<a href=\"http://tantek.org\" rel=\"met\">
●
because we have physically met Tantek
●
●
I might say:
●
<a href=\"http://tantek.org\" rel=\"friend\">
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because I consider him a friend (and hope the

Case Study: hReview
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* Call for participation put out 23 April 2005
●
* On 29 April 2005—that's six days—v0.1 was done
and published
– Input and support from representatives of America
Online, CommerceNet Labs, Microsoft, Six Apart,
Technorati, and Yahoo!
●
* Defines eleven properties that are relevant to
reviewing, well, anything—records, restaurants,
concerts, classes, presentations
●

Hreview Example
●
<div class=\"hreview\">
●
<span><span class=\"rating\">5</span> out of 5 stars</span>
●
<h4 class=\"summary\"><span class=\"item fn\">Crepes on Cole</span> is
awesome</h4>
●
<span>Reviewer: <span class=\"reviewer fn\">Tantek</span> ­
●
<abbr class=\"dtreview\" title=\"20050418T2300­0700\">April 18,
2005</abbr></span>
●
<blockquote class=\"description\"><p>Crepes on Cole is one of the best
little creperies in San Francisco.Excellent food and service. Plenty of ...
</p></blockquote>
●
<p>Visit date: <span>April 2005</span></p>
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<p>Food eaten: <span>Florentine crepe</span></p>

People and Events
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* Very common \"structures\" on weblogs
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* Create explicit structures
●
o in order to easily publish, index, aggregate
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* Minimize impact on authors (and developers)
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* Avoid duplicating all content
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o Avoid requiring file uploads

hCard
●
<div class=\"vcard\">
●
<a class=\"url\" href=\"http://tantek.com/\">
●
<span class=\"n\" style=\"display:none\"> <!­­ hide this from
display with CSS ­­>
●
<span class=\"family­name\">Çelik</span>
●
<span class=\"given­name\">Tantek</span>
●
</span>
●
<span class=\"fn\">Tantek Çelik</span>
●
</a>
●
<div class=\"org\"><span class=\"organization­

Why?
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Simple: From “conceive” to “ship” in 1 hour!
●
Incremental
●
Participative

Social networks

Future of KM http://www.ahtgroup.com/futurekm.htm

Social networks. Traditional organisational charts and business
process maps tell you very little about how work is actually
performed in an organisation. The reality is that work and
knowledge flow in often highly informal patterns, based on who
people actually communicate with in doing their work. Social
network analysis is being applied by many leading companies
around the world to gain insights into this \"invisible
organisation,\" and to design interventions that enhance the
productivity and effectiveness of knowledge work.

Social networks

Future of KM http://www.ahtgroup.com/futurekm.htm

Relevance. In a world of massive information overload, we want
to see only information that is highly relevant to our work and
interests. Among the many evolving technologies that support
this, there are two key practices that will be central to enhancing
information relevance. Implicit profiling learns from what we
search for and look at, when, and for how long, to improve over
time at understanding what we find useful. Collaborative
filtering allows us to draw on the insights and discoveries of
people who have similar profiles and interests to us.
Amazon.com uses similar approaches in a basic form to point us
to books and CDs we might like. The future lies in finding
relevance for individuals from vast oceans of information.