The Rise and Fall of TOPICS

The Rise and Fall and Rise of TOPICS Semantic Technology Conference June 16, 2009 Barbara McGlamery Rachel Lovinger Page 1 Photo by Adam Ahmed

Introduction Time Inc Interactive •Early adopter of Semantic Web technologies •Used successfully in many redesigns of Time Inc. sites The Price of Innovation •Steep learning curve •No one to learn from Page 2 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

EW.com’s Category Tool What we were trying to do •Standardize keywords •Update once, publish everywhere •Expose rich data relationships Our Solution: Category Tool •Relational database •Controlled vocabulary •Hierarchical structure of terms •Defined relationships between categories •Precision search terms Page 5 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

EW.com’s Category Tool Why it needed to be replaced •It wasn’t scalable •It couldn’t handle complex data relationships 79th Annual Oscars 2007 Common Name Academy Awards Best Actress Best Picture Nominees Nominees Winner Winner Little Miss Penelope Meryl Sunshine Cruz Streep Babel Kate Letters from The Departed Helen Judi The Queen Winslet Iwo Jima Mirren Dench Page 6 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger Performance in Performance in Performance in Performance in Performance in

Category Tool 2.0: The Next Generation Requirements •Structured, controlled metadata •Relationships between data •Frequent updates •Integrated with CMS, for content tagging •Sharable, expandable, reliable In late 2003 we met with a large group of stakeholders, and then as a smaller working group. We decided to build a new classification system based on RDF and OWL, and we decided to call it TOPICS. Page 7 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

TOPICS: The Next Generation Why semantic? •Based on forward-looking industry standard formats •Formats designed to express and efficiently read complex metadata •The power of inferencing Why build instead of buy? •The tools we needed to integrate with a complex publishing process and CMS didn’t exist in 2003 Page 8 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

Building TOPICS Timing •3 ½ months to define requirements and write specifications •8 months to build Cost •Over $500K in capitalized cost (in real dollars about $1M) Resources •3 people wrote the spec •2 people built it •Several others were involved in other ways Page 10 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

Getting Approval In late 2003 we had a meeting with all of the executive sponsors of our department. •Business users explained their requirements and described current systems •Tech experts explained why current systems could not support the growing needs •All stakeholders agreed that a next generation system was needed Page 14 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger Photo by hobvias sudoneighm

No Executive Sponsor We had their blessing, but we had no executive sponsor. • We checked in once when the specs were done • Again about 5 months into the build (functional, but not pretty) We have done the “What is TOPICS and why do we need it?” song and dance about 30 times in 5 years. Page 15 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

MyHomeIdeas Goals Relaunch the AOL Home channel as a deep, easy-to-use and fulfilling source of home inspiration •Design Assistant – thousands of photos from a variety of Time Inc. magazines •Browse by room, room detail or solution •Refine results by style or publication Page 18 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

Lessons Learned •Get involved with functionality discussions early to identify all the places where integration should happen •Use realistic sample data in design comps •A little knowledge can be dangerous - make sure that everyone on the team is fully filled in Page 22 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

Lessons Learned • Don’t hardcode the taxonomy into a display template! •Establish guidelines for shared metadata – what should be shared and what shouldn’t Page 27 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

InStyle Goals Showcase the latest fashion products • Hierarchical browse of products • Meaningful related products • Discovery of new and trusted brands Page 29 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

Lessons Learned • Develop detailed technical specification • Determine standards for template developers • Reduce time spent processing complex queries • Editorial training geared toward website functionality Page 33 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

EW.com Goals Redesign EW.com •Enhance All About Pages •Boost interactivity with audience •Use additional technology to build audience (SEO, RSS, etc) •Create comprehensive media products database Page 35 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

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Lessons Learned • Solve scalability issues before migration • Allow enough time and resources for development • Don’t give up functionality that you consider essential to the site Page 42 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

Other Challenges: Search vs. Tagging “Can’t we just get a better search engine and do all of this with unstructured content?” Page 49 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger Photo by Danard Vincente

Other Challenges: Vision All of the people who originated the project left the company. No one who was left had a big picture view of where the project was going. No one was strategizing about how it could be used across the organization. Page 52 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger Photo by Prabhu

Lessons Learned •When the project launches, announce it •Promote the benefits clearly and often •Provide visualizations and easy-to-use interface •Make sure someone is in charge of the vision Page 53 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

Enhanced Performance •Additional hardware improved performance •Caching of TOPICS data in CMS allows quicker response times •Integration with new CMS CMS TOPICS Article Search Index Template Article TOPICS #123 COPY Brad Pitt Page 57 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

Where is it going next? •Establish executive sponsorship •Determine new uses •Enhance taxonomy management tools •Move to more semantically enabled database •Upgrade query language to SPARQL •More thorough integration with CMS and other systems Page 58 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

Universal Challenges •Executive sponsorship •Vision, business strategy •Scalability & RDF data storage issues •Efficiency of APIs •Guidelines for shared metadata •Robust, easy-to-use interface •Training and communications for business users •Standards for design, functional specs, implementation •Data migration Page 60 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

The Rise and Fall of TOPICS

by Rachel Lovinger on Dec 15, 2009

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