This document summarizes the rise and fall of TOPICS, a semantic technology project at Time Inc. It describes how TOPICS was initially developed and implemented successfully on some sites, but then faced challenges of perception, performance, development, and business adoption. Lessons are provided around getting executive sponsorship, detailed specifications, scalability, and vision. The document concludes by noting how TOPICS is now better perceived and integrated, and outlines future plans to establish new uses and improve the technology further.

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

2. 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

3. Agenda
• How It Got Started
• Challenges
• Looking Forward
• Summary
Page 3 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

4. How It Got Started
Page 4 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger
Photo by David Fulmer

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. TOPICS stands for…
TIME TIME
ONTOLOGIES for ONTOLOGIES for
PUBLISHING, PUBLISHING
INFERENCE, INTELLIGENT
CLASSIFICATION and CONTENT
SEMANTICS (SYSTEM)
Page 9 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

10. 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

11. Launching the first sites
•AOL Home: (12/04)
•Teen People: (1/05)
•Real Simple: (2/05)
•In Style: (7/05)
Page 11 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

12. Challenges
Page 12 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger
Photo by hounddiggity

13. Types of Challenges We Faced
•Perception
•Performance & Scalability
•Business Development
•Technical Development
Page 13 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

14. 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

15. 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

16. Lessons Learned
•Get an Executive Sponsor
•Check in often
•Let that person do your PR while you focus on the work
Page 16 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

17. Page 17 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

18. 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

19. MyHomeIdeas: Only Photos Tagged
Page 19 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

20. MyHomeIdeas: Meaningless Related Links
Page 20 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

21. MyHomeIdeas: Bad Press (from inside)
Page 21 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

22. 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

23. Page 23 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

24. Real Simple Goals
Create a useful directory of Home Solutions
•Browse by a range of categories
•Meaningful related solutions
•Website directory
Page 24 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

25. Real Simple: Hard-coded Navigational Taxonomy
Page 25 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

26. Real Simple: Difficulty Sharing
Page 26 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

27. 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

28. Page 28 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

29. 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

30. InStyle: No Technical Specifications
Page 30 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

31. InStyle: Slow to Retrieve and Sort Data
CMS TOPICS
Article
Search
Index Template
Article
#123
Brad
Pitt
Page 31 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

32. InStyle: Editors Reluctant to Tag
“Why should I tag if
it doesn’t show up
in search?”
Page 32 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

33. 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

34. Page 34 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

35. 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

36. EW.com: Simultaneous Large Projects
Page 36 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

37. EW.com: Development Setting
DEV…..QA…. PROD
Instituted New Environments
Too many chefs
New hardware
Page 37 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

38. EW.com: Move to TOPICS version 2.0
Page 38 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

39. EW.com: Complex Data Migration
Page 39 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

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© 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger
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41. EW.com: Scaled Down Dynamic Functionality
Page 41 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

42. 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

43. Page 43 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

44. People Goals
Redesign People.com
• Enhanced and automated Celebrity pages
• News items classified by subject
• Integration of archive with
main site
Page 44 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

45. People: Simultaneous Large Projects
Page 45 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

46. People: Shortsightedness
Page 46 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

47. Lessons Learned
•More thorough business development
•Solve scalability issues before migration
•Allow enough time for development
Page 47 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

48. Other Challenges: Prototype
People mistakenly believed that TOPICS was a prototype
Page 48 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger
Photo by Steve Jurvetson

49. 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

50. Other Challenges: No Visualization
QA and Design had no easy way to look at the data in TOPICS
Page 50 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

51. Other Challenges: User Interface
Editors found it difficult to use
Page 51 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

52. 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

53. 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

54. Looking Forward
Page 54 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger
Photo by Max Blinkhorn

55. Change of heart
•Buy-in from Southern Living and SPC sites
•Increased web traffic
Page 55 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

56. Improved Perception
•User tagging
•Tagging Tool redesign
•Proven functionality
Page 56 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger

57. 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

58. 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

59. Summary
Page 59 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger
Photo by ken ratcliff

60. 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

61. Thanks !
barbara_mcglamery@timeinc.com
rachel.lovinger@razorfish.com
Page 61 © 2009 Barbara McGlamery & Rachel Lovinger
Photo by Marak