Dissemination v1

www.sti-innsbruck.at© Copyright 2008 STI INNSBRUCK www.sti-innsbruck.at
Multi-channel Publishing /
Dissemination
Carmen Brenner, Dieter Fensel, Andreea
Gagiu, Birgit Leiter, Ioannis Stavrakantonakis

www.sti-innsbruck.at
Multi-Channel Publishing / Dissemination
Overview
1. Introduction
2. What is dissemination?
3. Why do it?
4. How is it done?
5. Classification of Dissemination Channels
6. Pitfalls of dissemination
7. Measuring impact of dissemination
8. Summary
Image taken from: http://www.rgbstock.com
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Introduction
• The Last 200 years have strongly revolutionized international transport and
communication .
• Fax, Phone and most of all the Internet have radically changed our communication
possibilities.
• More and more communication has been freed from geographical barriers that
formerly limited their speed and expansion.
• But new means also generate new challenges:
– the number of channels has grown exponentially,
– communication has changed from unilateral
mode to an increasingly fully bilateral communication,
– the contents of communication becomes more and
more granular
3

Introduction
• Times where a Business unit communicates through only one or two channels with
his customers have passed. (Potential) customers:
– Search Information on your website
– Send an email request
– Get advised by a chat-agent
– Visit your Business in person
– Call your call center
– Read your newsletter
– Write to you on facebook
– Retweet your comment on twitter
– …
• And the multi-channel monster is still growing!
4

Overview
1. Introduction
3. Why do it?
4. How is it done?
8. Summary
5

What is Dissemination?
• The vital importance of receiving, synthesizing and
communicating online information is increasing
dramatically in our current digital age.
• Dissemination (from the Latin dissēminātus = “sowing
seeds”, “scatter wildly in every direction”) refers to the
process of broadcasting a message to the public without
direct feedback from the audience.
• Takes on the view of the traditional view of communication
which involves a sender and a receiver.
• The message carrier sends out information to many in a
broadcasting system (composed of more than one
channels).
• Harmsworth et al. (2000) define dissemination as the
“delivering and receiving of a message”, “the
engagement of an individual in a process” and “the
transfer of a process or product”.
6
Image taken from: http://nichcy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/rsz_1rsz_dissemination2.jpg

What is a dissemination channel?
• “In telecommunications and computer networking, a communication channel, or
channel, refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a
logical connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel.” (Wikipedia
Channel (communications), 2012)
• A channel is a means of exchanging information in the on-line space; a “place” where
one can find or leave information, whether it is unanimously referred by a URI or
addressed through a service.
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Overview
1. Introduction
3. Why do it?
4. How is it done?
8. Summary
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Why Do It?
Purpose of Dissemination
• Dissemination for Awareness
– You wish people to be aware of the work of the project
– Useful for those target audiences that do not require a detailed knowledge of the work and is
helpful for them to be aware of your activities and results
– Will help the “word of mouth” type dissemination and help the organizer build an identity and
profile within the community
• Dissemination for Understanding
– It is aimed at a specific number of groups/audiences that need to be targeted directly
– Target audience that benefits from what your project has to offer and have a deeper
understanding of the project’s work
• Dissemination for Action
– “Action” = change of practice resulting from the adoption of products, materials or
approaches offered by the project
– Target audience: people that are in the position to “influence” and “bring about change” within
their organizations (have skills, knowledge and understanding of your work)
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Source: http://www.northampton.ac.uk/info/200267/pedagogic-research-and-scholarship/1068/dissemination

Overview
1. Introduction
3. Why do it?
4. How is it done?
8. Summary
10

How Is It Done?
Components of Effective Dissemination Plan
• Focus on the needs of the target audience and present in an appropriate manner
(using appropriate language and information levels).
• Include various dissemination methods, including written information, electronic
media, and person-to-person contact.
• Include both proactive and reactive dissemination channels
• Leverage existing resources, relationships, and networks fully.
• Include effective quality control mechanisms.
• They include sufficient information so that the reader/user can determine the basic
principles underlying specific practices and the settings in which these practices may
be used most productively.
• They establish links to resources that may be needed to implement the information.
11

Overview
1. Introduction
3. Why do it?
4. How is it done?
8. Summary
12

Classification of Dissemination Channels
Classified by the type of service they provide:
• Static Broadcasting
• Dynamic Broadcasting
• Sharing
• Collaboration
• Social Networks
• Internet Forums and Discussion Boards
• Online Discussion Groups
• Semantic-based Dissemination
• Overview of Channels
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Image taken from: http://www.williamsclass.com/SixthScienceWork/Classification/ClassificationNotes/images/classify%20file%20cabinets.jpg

Static Broadcasting
• Prehistoric methods of dissemination: cave drawings, stories of triumphs on
columns and arches, history on pyramids, stones with messages
• More modern means: printed press, newspapers, journals
• Online static dissemination: websites and homepages….
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Static Broadcasting
Homepages / Static Websites
• Powerful tool for reaching the target audience and promoting the project
• Primarily used to provide information about the project and news of its activities and
outcomes.
• There is the temptation to present the information in order to “wow” the visitor
• BUT!: users tend to prefer good content in a simple, clear and easy-to navigate
interface (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)
• Although created through a collaborative process, Wiki websites can be considered
static forms of online broadcasting as the information contained in them remains the
same for long periods of time (i.e. the collaboration process is mostly employed for
adding new data or editing/correcting existing one).
• Wikipedia is an equally important channel that should be mentioned (although articles
are created through a collaborative process)
15
Image taken from: http://www.softicons.com
Online Broadcasting – Static Websites

Static Broadcasting
16
Homepage Example
Static Website Example
The same hotel mentioned
on Wikitravel’s entry for
Innsbruck

Static Broadcasting
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Entry in Wikipedia for Hotel
Goldener Adler

Static Broadcasting
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Entry in Wikipedia for
Dieter Fensel

Dynamic Broadcasting
• Small piece of content that is dependent upon constraints such as time and location.
• With Web 2.0 technologies have created dedicated means for publishing streams and
interacting with content generated by users.
• Blogs: pages where people present their ideas, views and opinions on a particular
subject
• News: pages where facts or factual information is provided
• BUT: Producing high-quality content for a blog on a regularly basis is time-consuming
and costly
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Good practices:
• Each new item has its own URL (in order to be bookmarked, shared, returned in
search results, etc.)
• Should contain a pointer to a more detailed description about the information items
described;
• Each new item is archived
• Each new item can be indexed by search engines
• Each new item is types (through the use of the information model)
• Each new item is categorized (using folksonomy)
• Each post can be directly shared, liked, added to favorites.
• News can be searched for, sorted and filtered
• Important news items stay at the top to highlight main announcements
20
Source: http://oc.sti2.at/images/c/c7/STI_International_On-line_Communication_Handbook.pdf

Channels/Tools – An overview
• Examples of tools (organized considering
first the length of message and second –
the level of interactivity):
– News Feeds
– Newsletters
– Email / Email lists
– Microblogs
– Blogs
– Social networks
– Chat and instant messaging applications
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News Feeds
• RSS (Rich Site Summary) Feeds:
– a family of web feed formats used to deliver regularly changing web content.
– Many websites and blogs offer users the option of subscribing to their RSS feed.
– The content is syndicated automatically – the user does not have to visit each website
manually
– RSS Readers are available for different platforms:
• PC readers: Amphetadesk, FeedReader, NewsGator
• Web-based readers: My Yahoo, Bloglines, Google Reader
– Includes full or summarized text, plus metadata (publishing dates and authorship)
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Image taken from: http://www.softicons.com

News Feeds
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>RSS Title</title>
<description>This is an example of an RSS feed</description>
<link>http://www.someexamplerssdomain.com/main.html</link>
<lastBuildDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:01:00 +0000 </lastBuildDate>
<pubDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2009 16:45:00 +0000 </pubDate>
<ttl>1800</ttl>
<item>
<title>Example entry</title>
<description>Here is some text containing an interesting description.</description>
<link>http://www.wikipedia.org/</link>
<guid>unique string per item</guid>
<pubDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2009 16:45:00 +0000 </pubDate>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
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Newsletters
• The newsletter is an instrument used to regularly exchange information among the
members of a community
• It constitutes the primary means of collecting and spreading the results achieved
through network activities.
• The main objectives of the Newsletter are:
– to report the main activities promoted and undertaken
– to widely disseminate information about published papers (position papers, state of the art
reviews) of researchers involved in the network.
• Website users have the possibility to subscribe to the Newsletter and automatically
receive each issue in their mailbox.
• Users should have the option of subscribing and unsubscribing
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Email/Email lists
• Email: means of exchanging digital messages from a sender to one or multiple
recipients
• (Electronic) Mailing lists: collection of names and (email) addresses used to send
material to multiple recipients.
– Announcement lists (Newsletters, periodicals, advertising – used primarily as a one-way
conduit of information and can be “posted to” by selected people) vs. Discussion lists (any
subscriber can post)
– Can be self-hosted (e.g. GNU Mailman) or third-party hosted (as part of notifications for
Google groups, Yahoo! Groups )
– Requires users to subscribe to the list.
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• Since email lists are mostly not accessible to a
wider audience, they should be ignored for
external use and focus should be primarily on
external means of communication
• Email is a good method of sharing information on
a one-to-one basis (e.g. mail this website to a
friend)
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Email/Email lists
• Well established means for dissemination within a predetermined group
• Requires members to subscribe to a mailing list
• Despite their obvious strength, in the age of information overload and spam, mailing
lists will not perform efficiently if they are not carefully targeted and offer recipients
the option to subscribe/ unsubscribe whenever they wish.
• Note!: there are legal requirements associated with the possibility to
subscribe/unsubscribe and the storage of and access to personal data [European
Commission, n.d.]

Microblogging
• Broadcast medium similar to blogs
• The difference between microblogging and an actual blog is in the size of the
content in both actual and aggregate files.
• The actual messages are called microposts.
• Commercial microblogs exist to promote websites, services, products or
collaboration within an organization.
• Can contain a wide range of topics.
• Low effort to participate.
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Microblogging
• Twitter
– Social networking service and microblogging service
– users can send messages of a maximum length of 140 characters, follow other users,
and create interest lists.
– Widely used means of dissemination
– Significant space limitations: 140 characters or less
– Twitts are publicly visible by default (senders can restrict the access control)
– Users can tweet using the website, external APIs or SMS
– The service is free
– Users may subscribe to other users' tweets – this is known as following and subscribers
are known as followers or tweeps
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Microblogging
• Tumblr
– Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website.
– It is owned and operated by Tumblr, Inc.
– It allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog, named a
"tumblelog".
– Users can follow other users' blogs, as well as make their blogs private.
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Blogs
• Alternatively called web logs or weblogs
• A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged
chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser. *
• In some situations, it is the creator’s online journal.
• The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a
“blogger.”
• Items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order.
• Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”.
• Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty
regularly.
• Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic.
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*http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatmakesaweblogaweblog.html
Images taken from: http://www.softicons.com

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Using Social Networks
• Social network content is dynamic in the sense that it provides information that will
expire after a period of time and be important only for that period and moment;
• However, as it focuses more on creating communities than on the temporal and
geospatial aspect of the information, it will be discussed in detail in Section 4.5.
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Chat Applications
• one-to-one basis
• Instant method of communication
• Text-based chat, video chat, one vs. multiple receivers, web-based etc.
• Can be applied to a small number of people (it does not scale well for large groups –
it is impossible to follow who is discussion when more than one member of the
discussion group is writing/typing simultaneously)
• It is not useful as a method of dissemination due to its instant and intrusive nature
• In order to be used as a dissemination method, the user must add the message
sender to the contact list
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… and many more

Sharing
• There are a large number of Web 2.0 websites that support the sharing of information
items such as: bookmarks, images, slides, and videos, etc.
• Provided by hosting services (images, videos, slides are stored on a server)
41

Sharing
• Can use specialized applications (see below) of features of other platforms and
services (e.g. share photos through Facebook)
• Examples:
– Flickr – as a means of exchanging photos, visible to all users (no account necessary), allows
users to post comments;
– Slideshare – channel for storing and exchanging presentations;
– YouTube and VideoLectures – sharing videos, all users can see the posted videos and leave
comments on the websites
– Social Bookmark sites: e.g. delicious, digg, StumbleUpon
– Social News websites: e.g. reddit
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Sharing
slideshare
• Launched in 2006
• Is a Web 2.0 based slide hosting service
• Users can upload files privately or publicly as: PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote or
OpenOffice presentations
• Slide decks can then be viewed on the site itself, on hand held devices or
embedded on other sites
• SlideShare also provides users the ability to rate, comment on, and share the
uploaded content
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Slide Sharing

Sharing
44

Sharing
flickr
• Launched in 2004, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005
• Image and video hosting website, web services suite and online community
• It is a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs
• It is a service widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and
social media
• features:
– accounts, groups and access control
– organization (based on tags added on the pictures),
– organizr (web application for organizing photos within an account that can be accessed
through the Flikr interface),
– picnik (default photo editor in a partnership with Picnik online photo-editing application),
access control,
– interaction and compatibility with other applications (e.g. RSS and Atom feeds)
– filtering (lets members specify by default what types of images they generally upload and
how "safe" the images are),
– licensing, map sources (georgraphic locations), account-undelete option (reverse an
account rermination)
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Picture Sharing

Sharing
46

Sharing
YouTube
• Video-sharing website where users can upload, view and share videos
• Features
– Video technology: Playback (re-watch a video), Uploading (up to 15 min), Quality and codecs
and 3D videos
– Content accessibility - view videos on web pages outside the site
– Localization - adaptability to different languages, regional differences and technical
requirements
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Video Sharing

Sharing
Videolectures
• VideoLectures.NET is a free and open access educational video lectures repository.
• The lectures are given by distinguished scholars and scientists at the most important
and prominent events such as conferences, summer schools, workshops and science
promotional events from many scientific fields.
• The portal is aimed at promoting science, exchanging ideas and fostering knowledge
sharing by providing high quality, didactic contents not only to the scientific
community but also to the general public.
• All lectures, accompanying documents, information and links are systematically
selected and classified through the editorial process whilst taking into account users'
comments.
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Video Sharing

Sharing
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Sharing
• Is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks
of resources online.
• Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata, so users
may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for
themselves.
• The resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.
• Social bookmarking is particularly useful when collecting a set of resources that are to
be shared with others.
• Anyone can participate in social bookmarking.
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Social Bookmarking

Sharing
delicious
• Founded in 2003
• Is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web
bookmarks.
• Characterized by a non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each
of their bookmarks with the desired index terms (which generates a kind of
folksonomy)
• A combined view of everyone's bookmarks with a given tag is available;
• The most important links or popular ones can be seen on the home page, "popular"
and "recent" pages
• All bookmarks are publicly viewable by default - the public aspect is emphasized the
site is not focused on storing private bookmark collections
• But users have the ability to mark some as private and imported ones are private by
default
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Social Bookmarking

Sharing
52

Sharing
digg
• User-driven social content website
• After a user submits content, other users read their submission and "Digg" what they
like best
• Allows users to vote stories up or down (called digging and burying, respectively)
• If a story receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the first page
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Social Bookmarking

Sharing
StumbleUpon
• Is a discovery engine that finds and recommends web content to its users
• StumbleUpon uses collaborative filtering (an automated process combining human
opinions with machine learning of personal preference) to create virtual communities
of like-minded Web surfers.
• Rating Web sites update a personal profile (a blog-style record of rated sites) and
generate peer networks of Web surfers linked by common interest.
• These social networks coordinate the distribution of Web content, so that users
"stumble upon" pages explicitly recommended by friends and peers.
• Giving a site a thumbs up results in the site being placed under the user's "favorites".
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Social Bookmarking

Sharing
reddit
• Is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of
either a link or a text "self" post.
• Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post
and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.
• In December 2011, Reddit served just over 2 billion page views to almost 35 million
visitors *
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http://www.businessinsider.com/the-secret-to-reddits-astounding-success-an-easy-customization-process-you-should-copy-2012-1
Social Bookmarking

Collaboration
Wiki
• “Wiki” = Hawaiian word for “fast” of “quick”.
• Described by the developer of the first wiki software, Ward Cunningham, as the
“simplest online database that could possibly work”*.
• Websites whose users can add, modify or delete content via a web browser using
simplified markup language or a rich-text editor.
• Are powered by wiki software.
• Most of the content is created collaboratively.
• Promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making link
creation intuitively easy and showing whether an intended page exists or not.
• It seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that
constantly changes the Web site landscape
• However – once created the information remains static until another user edits or
deletes it.
*http://www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki
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Collaboration
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Example Wiki
Biggest online free
encyclopedia

Collaboration
Google Docs
• Is a free, Web-based office suite and data storage service
• It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time
with other users.
• Google Docs combines the features of Writely and Spreadsheets with a presentation
program incorporating technology designed by Tonic Systems.
• Data storage of files up to 1 GB total in size was introduced on January 13, 2010, but
has since been increased to 10 GB, documents using Google Docs native formats do
not count towards this quota.
• Its main features rely on storage, file limits, and supported file formats
58

Collaboration
Ether Pad
• EtherPad web service allows real-time document collaboration for groups and teams.
• Etherpad can be re-branded with your own domain and company name.
• Acquired by Google – the servers are down
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Social Networks
• Provide a community aspect, i.e. forms a community that shares information in a
multi-directional way
• Common features (regardless of platform):
– construct a public/semi-public profile;
– articulate list of other users that they share a connection with;
– view the list of connections within the system
• Some sites allow users to upload pictures, add multimedia content or modify the look
and feel of the profile
• Social networks typically offer more than one channel of dissemination (thus they will
be considered platforms with many available dissemination channels):
– Facebook: Pages, Groups, Share options
– LinkedIn and Xing are focused on professional use and fit the purpose of organizations
60

Social Network
Facebook
• Facebook is a social networking service and website;
• Launched in February 2004
• It is owned and operated by Facebook, Inc.
• As of May 2012 has over 900 million active users*
• More than half are using mobile devices*
• Users must register before using the services.
• Users can create a personal profile, add friends, exchange messages, chat (the
company has also launched a separate instant messaging service), receive automatic
notifications, take part in games, etc.
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* http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/technology/facebook-needs-to-turn-data-trove-into-investor-gold.html?_r=1

Social Network
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Social Network
Google+
• Social networking and identity service owned and operated by Google Inc
• Integrates social services such as Google Profiles
• Introduces new services such as Circles, Hangouts and Sparks
• Share photos, videos, links, or anything else that’s on your mind.
• Users can share using the share box on any Google site or +1 buttons across the
web.
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Social Network
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Social Network
LinkedIn
• Founded in December 2002
• LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network
• It has over 120 million members
• LinkedIn connects users to their trusted contacts
• Helps users exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of
professionals.
• It allows users to search, keep in touch and extend their networks of professionals
65

Social Network
66

Social Network
67
Xing
• Social and business networking tool for professionals with over 8 million users;
• Initially established as Open business Club AG in August 2003 in Germany; name
was changed to Xing in November 2006
• Main competitor is LinkedIn
• Seems to attract more small business and independent business owners than its
competitors
• Basic membership is free
• The platform uses https and has a rigid privacy and no-spam policy.

Social Network
68

Social Network
• Market share for December 2011 (according to ComScore):
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http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/googlesplus/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
Worldwide Unique Visitors Percentage
Facebook.com 792,999,000 55.1 %
Twitter.com 167,903,000 11.7 %
LinkedIn.com 94,823,000 6.6 %
Google+ 66,756,000 4.6 %
MySpace 61,037,000 4.2 %
Others 255,539,000 17.8 %
Total 1,438,877,000 100 %

Internet Forums and Discussion Boards
• Web applications managing user-generated content
• Early forums can be described as a web version of an email list or newsgroup
• Internet forums are prevalent in several countries: Japan, China
• Are governed by a set of rules
• Users have a specific designated role, e.g. moderator, administrator
• The unit of communication is the post
• Common features
– Tripcodes and capcodes - a secret password is added to the user's name following a
separator character
– Private message
– Attachment
– BBCode and HTML
– Emoticon or smiley to convey emotion
– Poll
– RSS and ATOM feeds
– Other forum features
70

Internet Forums and Discussion Boards
71

Online Discussion Groups
• Many-to-many
• Threaded conversations
• Usually created on a particular topic
• Have different access levels
• Better for disseminating within a group that shares common interests as the purpose
of the services is to enable collaboration, knowledge and information sharing and
open discussions
• Examples: Google Groups, Facebook Groups, Yahoo! Groups, LinkedIn Groups, Xing
Groups.
• Similar in many ways to Discussion boards and Internet Forums
72

Google Groups
• Not a common forum software
• Includes an archive of Usenet news group postings dating back t o 1981
• Strongly focuses on the concept of mailing list - Can have parallel mailing lists (can
use Google groups to archive another mailing list, such as Yahoo Groups)
• Need a Google account to access groups or post messages;
• What can be shared: there’s a limit of 25MB including attachments/ group
• Joining a group: Invitation or request. Owners can make an opt-out issue by inviting
members directly through their email address
• Notifications:
– No email: read group postings only online
– Abridged Email: one summary email of new activity/day
– Digest Email: get up to 25 full messages in a single email
– Email: send each message to me as it arrives
• Noise: the level of noise is dependent on the managers;
• Fully integrated with Google products : Google Calendars, Google Docs, Google
Sites
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Yahoo! Groups
• Yahoo! Groups is one of the world’s largest collections of online discussion boards.
• Group messages can be read and posted by e-mail or on the Group's webpage like a
web forum.
• Members can choose whether to receive individual, daily digest or Special Delivery e-
mails, or simply read Group posts on the Group’s web site
• Groups can be created with public or member-only access.
• Yahoo! Groups service provides additional facilities for each Group web site, such as
a homepage, message archive, polls, calendar
• announcements, files, photos, database functions, and bookmarks
75

Facebook Groups
• Create a private space (group) to share
– Post updates, questions, photos;
– Chat with the group;
– Create share docs
– Schedule group events
• Members can stay in touch using:
– Notifications regarding new posts and updates
– The group’s shared email address to connect off Facebook
76

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• Pages allow real organizations, businesses,
celebrities and brands to communicate
broadly with people who like them.
• Pages may only be created and managed by
official representatives.
• Privacy: information and posts are public and
generally available to everyone on Facebook.
• Audience:
– Anyone can like a Page to become connected
with it and get News Feed updates.
– There is no limit to how many people can like a
Page.
– Visitor statistics
• Communication:
– Page admins can share posts under the Page’s
name.
– Page posts appear in the News Feed of people
who like the Page.
– Page admins can also create customized apps
for their Pages and check Page Insights to track
the Page’s growth and activity.
• Groups provide a closed space for small groups
of people to communicate about shared
interests.
• Groups can be created by anyone.
• Privacy: groups offer three levels of control over
shared information: open, closed and secret. In
secret and closed groups, posts are only visible
to group members.
• Audience:
– Group members must be approved or added by
other members.
– When a group reaches a certain size, some
features are limited (e.g. chat).
– The most useful groups tend to be the ones you
create with small groups of people you know.
• Communication:
– In groups, members receive notifications by default
when any member posts in the group.
– Group members can participate in chats, upload
photos to shared albums, collaborate on group
docs, and invite all members to group events.
Groups: smaller number of people.
Pages: large number of followers
Facebook Groups

LinkedIn
• Discover the most popular discussions.
• Take an active part in determining the top discussions by liking and commenting.
• Follow the most influential people in your groups by checking the Top Influencers
board or clicking their profile image to see all their group activity.
• Review new members or search for specific ones.
• See both member-generated discussions and news in one setting.
• Easily browse previews of the last three comments in a discussion.
• Find interesting discussions by seeing who liked a discussion and how many people
commented.
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Xing
• Social and business networking tool for professionals with over 8 million users;
• Initially established as Open business Club AG in August 2003 in Germany; name
was changed to Xing in November 2006
• Main competitor is LinkedIn
• Seems to attract more small business and independent business owners than its
competitors
• Basic membership is free
• The platform uses https and has a rigid privacy and no-spam policy.

80
Tool Website Description
Meetup www.meetup.com Meetup is an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group
meetings in various localities around the world [Wiki].
GroupSpaces groupspaces.com GroupSpaces (styled groupspaces) is a London-based online company that
provides technology to help real-world clubs, societies, associations and
other groups manage their membership and activities, and promote
themselves online [Wiki].
Windows Live
Groups
groups.live.com Windows Live Groups is an online service by Microsoft as part of its
Windows Live range of services that enable users to create their social
groups for sharing, discussion and coordination [Wiki].

81
Characteristics Google Groups Yahoo Groups Facebook Groups LinkedIn
Groups
Xing Groups
Forums Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Chat Threaded
conversation
Yes Yes (max 250
members)
No No
Shared email Yes Yes Yes No No
Upload content (documents,
images, videos)
Not part of
groups
Google Docs
Yes Yes Via weblinks Yes
Maximum Storage 25 MB posts and
attachments
200 MB Unlimited -- 2 MB
Integrate external content
(RSS feeds)
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Notifications Customizable: no
email, abridged,
digest, email
Email Email, FB
notifications
Email,
bundled
http
newsletter
Search features Google Search /
Directory Search
Yahoo search,
separate group
search
Not a separate
function (Facebook
classic search),
clumsy and no
group suggestion
Advanced -
search for
group,
member,
event
Advanced

Social Network vs. Online Discussion Groups
• ODG have a limited number of members;
• ODG are intended for a smaller number of people to collaborate (Facebook places
the number at 250 members);
• ODG have a specific purpose – a goal that unites all members, i.e. a discussion topic.
• In ODG the number of members and the ideas of the members are known to all
participants.
• ODG have a creator/owner recognized by all members;
• ODG follow a set of rules determined by the administrator, moderator or owner;
• In ODG members may have different roles: administrator, moderator, owner,
participant, etc.
82

Social Network vs. Online Discussion Groups
• Moderators and administrators ensure that the ODG’s internal code of conduct is
followed;
• In ODG all members have access to the same shared resources;
• ODG members do not have to be connected with the other members (other than the
group) to communicate
• SN vary in size and heterogeneity;
• In SN different members have access to different resources (e.g. some members
might have restricted access to a friend’s photo archive);
• In SN members do not know how many participant exist, or who they are;
83

Semantic Based Dissemination
What is semantic web?
• An extension of the current web in which information is given a well defined meaning,
better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation
84

Why use semantics?
• Problems with current day search engines:
– Recall issues
– Results are dependent on the vocabulary
– Results are single Web pages
– Human involvement is necessary for result interpretation
– Results of Web searches are not readily accessible by other software tools
• Content is not machine-readable:
– It is difficult to distinguish between:
“I am a professor of computer science.”
and
“You may think, I am a professor of computer science.
Well, actually. . .”
85

The Semantic Web Approach
• Represent Web content in a form that is more easily machine-processable.
• Use intelligent techniques to take advantage of these representations.
• Knowledge will be organized in conceptual spaces according to its meaning.
• Automated tools for maintenance and knowledge discovery
• Semantic query answering
• Query answering over several documents
• Defining who may view certain parts of information (even parts of documents) will be
possible.
• Semantic Web does not rely on text-based manipulation, but rather on machine-
processable metadata
86

• Scope: Add machine-processable semantics to the information
⟹ Search and aggregation engines can provide much
better service in finding and retrieving information
• Search Engine Optimization
– Are potential customers finding your web site?
– Is it possible that potential customers might not be aware that your site exists?
– Do your targeted search terms have high search engine rankings?
– Does your website attract a large number of daily visitors?
• Search engines are driven by keywords:
– search engine optimization is concerned with improving the visibility of a website or web page in
search engines' unpaid search results
– the more frequent a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive
• Semantic Search:
– semantic search tries to understand the searcher's intent and meaning of the query instead of
parsing the keywords like a dictionary
– semantic search dives into the relationships between the query words, how the are connected, in
order to understand what they mean
87

Implementations – Rich Snippets
• Implementation realization of an application, plan, idea, model, or design.
• Snippets—the few lines of text that appear under every search result—are designed
to give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query.
• If Google understands the content on your pages, we can create rich snippets—
detailed information intended to help users with specific queries.
88

Overview
89
Format
e.g. RDFa
Implementation
e.g. OWLIM
Vocabulary
e.g. foaf

• A (Semantic Web) vocabulary can be considered as a special form of (usually light-
weight) ontology, or sometimes also merely as a collection of URIs with an (usually
informally) described meaning*.
– URI = uniform resource identifier
– Semantic vocabularies include: FOAF, Dublin Core, Good Relations, etc.
• Format is an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product, or
service.
– The most known examples are RDF and OWL.
• Implementation realization of an application, plan, idea, model, or design.
– OWLIM - a family of semantic repositories, or RDF database management system
90
* http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Ontology

Format
• an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product, or service.
• is an encoded format for converting a specific type of data to displayable information.
91

Methods of describing Web content:
92
HTML Meta
Elements
1999
RDFs
1998
RDF
2004
RDFa
2005
Microformats
2007
OWL
2008
SPARQL
2009
OWL 2
2010
RIF
2011
Microdata

Format – HTML Meta Elements
• HTML or XHTML elements which provide structured metadata about a Web page
• Represented using the <meta...> element
• Can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not
provided through the other head elements and attributes
• Example:
93
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html" >

• Search engine optimization attributes: keywords, description, language, robots
– keywords attribute - although popular in the 90s, search engine providers realized that
information stored in meta elements (especially the keywords attribute) was often unreliable
and misleading, or created to draw users towards spam sites
– description attribute - provides concise explanation of a Web page's content
– the language attribute - tells search engines what natural language the website is written in
– the robots attribute - controls whether or not search engine spiders are allowed to index a
page, and whether or not they should follow links from a page
94

• Example - metadata contained by www.wikipedia.org:
95
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="title" content="Wikipedia">
<meta name="description" content="Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.">
<meta name="author" content="Wikimedia Foundation">
<meta name="copyright" content="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 and GNU
Free Documentation License">
<meta name="publisher" content="Wikimedia Foundation">
<meta name="language" content="Many">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">

<meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">

Format – RDFa
• Is a W3C Recommendation that adds a set of attribute-level extensions to XHTML for
embedding rich metadata within Web documents.
• Adds a set of attribute-level extensions to XHTML enabling the embedding of RDF
triples;
• Integrates best with the W3C meta data stack built on top of RDF
• Benefits [Wikipedia RDFa, n.d.]:
– Publisher independence: each website can use its own standards;
– Data reuse: data is not duplicated - separate XML/HTML sections are not required for the
same content;
– Self containment: HTML and RDF are separated;
– Schema modularity: attributes are reusable;
– Evolv-ability: additional fields can be added and XML transforms can extract the semantics
of the data from an XHTML file;
– Web accessibility: more information is available to assistive technology.
• Disadvantage: the uptake of the technology is hampered by the web-
master’s lack of familiarity with this technology stack
96

Format – RDFa
• RDFa Attributes:
– about and src – a URI or CURIE specifying the resource the metadata is about
– rel and rev – specifying a relationship or reverse-relationship with another resource
– href and resource – specifying the partner resource
– property – specifying a property for the content of an element
– content – optional attribute that overrides the content of the element when using the
property attribute
– datatype – optional attribute that specifies the datatype of text specified for use with the
property attribute
– typeof – optional attribute that specifies the RDF type(s) of the subject (the resource that the
metadata is about).
97

Format – RDFa
• Example
98
<div xmlns:dc=http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
about="http://www.example.com/books/wikinomics">
<span property="dc:title">Wikinomics</span>
<span property="dc:creator">Don Tapscott</span>
<span property="dc:date">2006-10-01</span>
</div>

Format – OWL
• Family of knowledge representation languages for
authoring ontologies
• WebOnt developed OWL language
• OWL based on earlier languages OIL and
DAML+OIL
• Characterized by formal semantics and RDF/XML-
based serializations for the Semantic Web
• Endorsed by the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C)
Source: McGuinness, COGNA October 3, 2003
99

OWL Sublanguages
• The W3C-endorsed OWL specification includes the definition of three variants of
OWL, with different levels of expressiveness (ordered by increasing expressiveness):
– OWL Lite - originally intended to support those users primarily
needing a classification hierarchy and simple constraints
– OWL DL - was designed to provide the maximum expressiveness
possible while retaining computational completeness, decidability,
and the availability of practical reasoning algorithms.
– OWL Full - designed to preserve some compatibility with RDF
Schema
• The following set of relations hold. Their inverses do not.
– Every legal OWL Lite ontology is a legal OWL DL ontology.
– Every legal OWL DL ontology is a legal OWL Full ontology.
– Every valid OWL Lite conclusion is a valid OWL DL conclusion.
– Every valid OWL DL conclusion is a valid OWL Full conclusion.
• Development of OWL Lite tools has thus proven almost as difficult as development of
tools for OWL DL, and OWL Lite is not widely used
Each of these sublanguage
is a syntactic extension of
its simpler predecessor.
100

Format – OWL
• Class Axioms
– oneOf (enumerated classes)
– disjointWith
– sameClassAs applied to class expressions
– rdfs:subClassOf applied to class expressions
• Boolean Combinations of Class Expressions
– unionOf
– intersectionOf
– complementOf
• Arbitrary Cardinality
– minCardinality
– maxCardinality
– cardinality
• Filler Information
– hasValue Descriptions can include specific value information
101

Format – OWL
• Example:
<owl:Class>
<owl:intersectionOf rdf:parseType=" collection">
<owl:Class rdf:about="#Person"/>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasChild"/>
<owl:allValuesFrom>
<owl:unionOf rdf:parseType=" collection">
<owl:Class rdf:about="#Doctor"/>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasChild"/>
<owl:someValuesFrom rdf:resource="#Doctor"/>
</owl:Restriction>
</owl:unionOf>
</owl:allValuesFrom>
</owl:Restriction>
</owl:intersectionOf>
</owl:Class>
102

Format – OWL 2
• Extends OWL 1
• Inherits OWL 1 language features
• Makes some patterns easier to write
• Does not change expressiveness, semantics and complexity
• Provides more efficient processing in implementations
• Syntactic sugar:
– DisjointUnion - Union of a set of classes; all the classes are pairwise disjoint
– DisjointClasses - A set of classes; all the classes are pairwise disjoint
– NegativeObjectPropertyAssertion - Two individuals; a property does not hold between them
– NegativeDataPropertyAssertion - An individual; a literal; a property does not hold between
them
• OWL 2 allows the same identifiers (URIs) to denote individuals, classes, and
properties
• Interpretation depends on context
• A very simple form of meta-modelling
103

Format – OWL 2
• New constructs for properties:
– Self restriction: Classes of objects that are related to themselves by a given property
– Qualified cardinality restriction: Qualifies the instances to be counted
– Object properties
– Disjoint properties
– Property chain: Properties can be defined as a composition of other properties
– keys
• An OWL 2 profile (commonly called a fragment or a sublanguage in computational
logic) is a trimmed down version of OWL 2 that trades some expressive power for the
efficiency of reasoning.
• OWL 2 profiles
– OWL 2 EL is particularly useful in applications employing ontologies that contain very large
numbers of properties and/or classes.
– OWL 2 QL is aimed at applications that use very large volumes of instance data,
and where query answering is the most important reasoning task
– OWL 2 RL is aimed at applications that require scalable reasoning without
sacrificing too much expressive power.
• OWL 2 profiles are defined by placing restrictions on the structure of OWL 2
ontologies.
Source: http://semwebprogramming.org/?p=175
104

Format – OWL 2
• Example property chains in OWL2:
Source: http://dior.ics.muni.cz/~makub/owl/
Declaration( ObjectProperty( :isEmployedAt ) )
ObjectPropertyAssertion( :isEmployedAt :Martin :SC )
SubObjectPropertyOf( ObjectPropertyChain(
:isEmployedAt :isPartOf ) :isEmployedAt)
ObjectPropertyAssertion( :isEmployedAt :Martin :ICS )
ObjectPropertyAssertion( :isEmployedAt :Martin :MU )
105

Format – RIF
• A collection of dialects (rigorously defined
rule languages)
• Intended to facilitate rule sharing and
exchange
• RIF framework is a set of rigorous
guidelines for constructing RIF dialects in a
consistent manner
• The RIF framework includes several
aspects:
– Syntactic framework
– Semantic framework
– XML framework
• RIF can be used to map between
vocabularies (one of the proposed use
cases)
Source: Michael Kifer State University of New York at Stony Brook
106

Format – RIF
• The standard RIF dialects are:
– Core - the fundamental RIF language. It is designed to be the common subset of most rule
engines. (It provides "safe" positive datalog with builtins.)
– BLD (Basic Logic Dialect) - adds a few things that Core doesn't have: logic functions,
equality in the then-part, and named arguments. (This is positive Horn logic, with equality
and builtins.)
– PRD (Production Rules Dialect) - adds a notion of forward-chaining rules, where a rule fires
and then performs some action, such as adding more information to the store or retracting
some information.
• Although RIF dialects were designed primarily for interchange, each dialect is a
standard rule language and can be used even when portability and interchange are
not required.
• The XML syntax is the only one defined as a standard for interchange. Various
presentation syntaxes are used in the specification, but they are not recommended
for sending between different systems.
Source: http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wiki/RIF_FAQ#What_is_RIF-BLD.3F__.28and_RIF-Core.2C_PRD.2C_FLD.29
107

Format – RIF
• A simplified example of RIF-Core rules combined with OWL to capture anatomical
knowledge that can be used to help label brain cortex structures in MRI images.
Source: http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wiki/Modeling_Brain_Anatomy
108

Format – Microformats
• Directly use meta tags of XHTML to embed semantic information in web documents;
• Microformats were developed as a competing approach directly using some existing
HTML tags to include meta data in HTML documents
• As of 2010, microformats allow the encoding and extraction of events, contact
information, social relationships and so on
• Advantages:
– you can publish a single, human readable version of your information in HTML and then
make it machine readable with the addition of a few standard class names
– No need to learn another language
– Easy to add
• However: they overload the class tag which causes problems for some parsers as it
makes semantic information and styling markup hard to differentiate
109

Format - Microformats
• Example
110
<ul class="vcard">
<li class="fn">Joe Doe</li>
<li class="org">The Example Company</li>
<li class="tel">604-555-1234</li>
<li><a class="url“ href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a></li>
</ul>

Format – Microdata
• Use HTML5 elements to include semantic descriptions into web documents aiming to
replace RDFa and Microformats.
• Introduce new tag attributes to include semantic data into HTML
• Unless you know that your target consumer only accepts RDFa, you are probably
best going with microdata.
• While many RDFa-consuming services (such as the semantic search engine Sindice)
also accept microdata, microdata-consuming services are less likely to accept RDFa.
111
• Advantages:
– the variable groupings of data within published area
tables may not be the detail required for a particular
application (e.g. age group, ethnic group or
occupational classification).
– the cross-tabulations of variables available in area
tables may not be those needed for a study (e.g. counts
of individuals by age and ethnic group and occupation).

• Examples:
– Google may use microdata in its results pages:
– Opera from version 11.60 is the only current stable release of a browser that supports
microdata:
– MicrodataJS is a JavaScript library and jQuery plugin that emulates the DOM API.
112

• Example without microdata:
113
<section>
Hello, my name is John Doe, I am a graduate research assistant at the University
of Dreams. My friends call me Johnny. You can visit my homepage at
<a href="http://www.JohnnyD.com">www.JohnnyD.com</a>
. I live at 1234 Peach Drive Warner Robins, Georgia.
</section>

• Example using microdata:
114
<section itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Person">
Hello, my name is
<span itemprop="name">John Doe</span>
, I am a
<span itemprop="title">graduate research assistant</span>
at the
<span itemprop="affiliation">University of Dreams</span>.
My friends call me
<span itemprop="nickname">Johnny</span>
. You can visit my homepage at
<a href=http://www.JohnnyD.com itemprop="url">www.JohnnyD.com</a>.
<section itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://data-
vocabulary.org/Address">
I live at
<span itemprop="street-address"> 1234 Peach Drive</span>
<span itemprop="locality">Warner Robins</span> ,
<span itemprop="region">Georgia</span>.
</section>
</section>

Format – RDF
• The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a language for representing
information about resources in the World Wide Web.
• RDF provides a common framework for expressing information so it can be
exchanged between applications without loss of meaning.
• It is based on the idea of identifying things using Web identifiers (called Uniform
Resource Identifiers, or URIs) and describing resources in terms of simple properties
and property values
• Thus, RDF can represent simple statements about resources as a graph of nodes
and arcs representing the resources, and their properties and values.
• It specifically supports the evolution of schemas over time without requiring all the
data consumers to be changed
115
Source: http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~trc/public/courses/Fall2008/week15/slide-w15.html#%287%29

Format – RDF
• Based on triples <subject, predicate, object>
• An RDF triple contains three components:
– the subject, which is an RDF URI reference or a blank node
– the predicate, which is an RDF URI reference
– the object, which is an RDF URI reference, a literal or a blank node
– An RDF triple is conventionally written in the order subject, predicate, object.
– The predicate is also known as the property of the triple.
• Triple data model:
<subject, predicate, object>
– Subject: Resource or blank node
– Predicate: Property
– Object: Resource (or collection of resources), literal or blank node
• Example:
<ex:john, ex:father-of, ex:bill>
116

Format – RDF
• An RDF graph is a set of RDF triples.
• The set of nodes of an RDF graph is the set of subjects and objects of triples in the
graph.
• Person ages (:age) and favorite friends (:fav)
117
Properties encoded as XML entities:
<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/
22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:example="http://fake.host.edu/e
xample-schema#">
<example:Person>
<example:name>Smith</example:name>
<example:age>21</example:age>
<example:fav>Jones</example>
</example:Person>
</rdf:RDF>

Format – SPARQL
• A recursive acronym for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language
• On 15 January 2008, SPARQL 1.0 became an official W3C Recommendation
• Query language based on RDQL
• Used to retrieve and manipulate data stored in RDF format
• Uses SQL-like syntax
118

Format – SPARQL
• Example SPARQL Query:
– “Return the full names of all people in the graph”
– Results:
fullName
=================
"John Smith"
"Mary Smith"
119
PREFIX vCard: <http://www.w3.org/2001/vcard-rdf/3.0#>
SELECT ?fullName
WHERE {?x vCard:FN ?fullName}
@prefix ex: <http://example.org/#> .
@prefix vcard: <http://www.w3.org/2001/vcard-rdf/3.0#> .
ex:john
vcard:FN "John Smith" ;
vcard:N [
vcard:Given "John" ;
vcard:Family "Smith" ] ;
ex:hasAge 32 ;
ex:marriedTo :mary .
ex:mary
vcard:FN "Mary Smith" ;
vcard:N [
vcard:Given "Mary" ;
vcard:Family "Smith" ] ;
ex:hasAge 29 .

120

121
Linked Data Cloud
Vocabulary – Linked Data

Vocabulary – Linked Data
• Materialization of the usage of vocabularies
• Wikipedia defines Linked Data as "a term used to describe a recommended best
practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and
knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDF“
• “Semantic web done right” Tim Berners-Lee
• Combination of openness with data + open standards
• Linked Data Essentials:
– Use URIs
– Use HTTP URIs
– Serve useful information using SPARQL, RDF standards
– Mention URIs of related objects
122

123

Vocabulary – schema.org
124

• Example*:
– Imagine you have a page about the movie Avatar—a page with a link to a movie trailer,
information about the director, and so on. Your HTML code might look something like this:
125
<div>
<h1>Avatar</h1>
<span>Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)</span>
<span>Science fiction</span>
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html">Trailer</a>
</div>
* http://schema.org/docs/gs.html

• Example with microdata*:
126
<div itemscope itemtype ="http://schema.org/Movie">
<h1 itemprop="name"&g;Avatar</h1>
<div itemprop="director" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
Director:
<span itemprop="name">James Cameron</span>
(born
<span itemprop="birthDate">August 16, 1954)</span>
</div>
<span itemprop="genre">Science fiction</span>
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html" itemprop="trailer">Trailer</a>
</div>
* http://schema.org/docs/gs.html

Vocabulary – FOAF
• Friend of a Friend
• Uses RDF to describe the relationship people have to other “things” around them
• FOAF permits intelligent agents to make sense of the thousands of connections
people have with each other, their jobs and the items important to their lives;
• Because the connections are so vast in number, human interpretation of the
information may not be the best way of analyzing them.
• FOAF is an example of how the Semantic Web attempts to make use of the
relationships within a social context.
127

Vocabulary – FOAF
• Example
• Which says "there is a Person called Dan Brickley who has an email address whose
sha1 hash is..."
128
<foaf:Person>
<foaf:name>Dan Brickley</foaf:name>
<foaf:mbox_sha1sum>
748934f32135cfcf6f8c06e253c53442721e15e7
</foaf:mbox_sha1sum>
</foaf:Person>

Vocabulary – GoodRelations
• A lightweight ontology for annotating offerings and other aspects of e-commerce on
the Web.
• The only OWL DL ontology officially supported by both Google and Yahoo.
• It provides a standard vocabulary for expressing things like
– that a particular Web site describes an offer to sell cellphones of a certain make and model at
a certain price,
– that a pianohouse offers maintenance for pianos that weigh less than 150 kg,
– or that a car rental company leases out cars of a certain make and model from a particular
set of branches across the country.
• Also, most if not all commercial and functional details of e-commerce scenarios can
be expressed, e.g. eligible countries, payment and delivery options, quantity
discounts, opening hours, etc.
129
http://semanticweb.org/wiki/GoodRelations

Vocabulary – GoodRelations
• Example:
130
<rdf:RDF xmlns="http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/examples/gr#"
xml:base="http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/examples/gr"
xmlns:toy="http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/examples/toy#"
xmlns:gr="http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:protege="http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/protege#"
xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#">
<owl:Ontology rdf:about="">
<owl:imports rdf:resource="http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/examples/toy"/>
<owl:imports rdf:resource="http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1"/>
</owl:Ontology>
<gr:BusinessEntity rdf:ID="ElectronicsCom">
<gr:legalName rdf:datatype="&xsd;string"
>Electronics.com Ltd.</gr:legalName>
<rdfs:seeAlso/>
<gr:offers rdf:resource="#Offering_1"/>
</gr:BusinessEntity>
</rdf:RDF>

Vocabulary – DublinCore
• Early Dublin Core workshops popularized the idea of "core metadata" for simple and
generic resource descriptions.
• Metadata terms are a set of vocabulary terms which can be used to describe
resources for the purposes of discovery.
• The terms can be used to describe a full range of web resources: video, images, web
pages etc. and physical resources such as books and objects like artworks
• The Dublin Core standard includes two levels:
– Simple Dublin Core comprises 15 elements;
– Qualified Dublin Core includes three additional elements;— Audience, Provenance and
RightsHolder;— as well as a group of element refinements, also called qualifiers, that refine
the semantics of the elements in ways that may be useful in resource discovery.
131
Source: http://dublincore.org (tutorials)

• Characteristics of DublinCore:
– All elements are optional
– All elements are repeatable
– Elements may be displayed in any order
– Extensible
– International in scope
• The fifteen core elements are usable with or without qualifiers
• Qualifiers make elements more specific:
– Element Refinements narrow meanings, never extend
– Encoding Schemes give context to element values
• If your software encounters an unfamiliar qualifier, look it up –or just ignore it!
132
Source: http://dublincore.org (tutorials)

• Expressing Dublin Core in HTML/XHTML meta and link elements:
133
...
<head profile="http://dublincore.org/documents/dcq-html/">
<title>Expressing Dublin Core in HTML/XHTML meta and link elements</title>
<link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" />
<link rel="schema.DCTERMS" href="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" />
<meta name="DC.title" lang="en" content="Expressing Dublin Core
in HTML/XHTML meta and link elements" />
<meta name="DC.creator" content="Andy Powell, UKOLN, University of Bath" />
<meta name="DCTERMS.issued" scheme="DCTERMS.W3CDTF" content="2003-11-01" />
<meta name="DC.identifier" scheme="DCTERMS.URI"
content="http://dublincore.org/documents/dcq-html/" />
<link rel="DCTERMS.replaces" hreflang="en"
href="http://dublincore.org/documents/2000/08/15/dcq-html/" />
<meta name="DCTERMS.abstract" content="This document describes how
qualified Dublin Core metadata can be encoded
in HTML/XHTML <meta> elements" />
<meta name="DC.format" scheme="DCTERMS.IMT" content="text/html" />
<meta name="DC.type" scheme="DCTERMS.DCMIType" content="Text" />
</head>
...

Implementations – Rich Snippets
• Three steps to rich snippets
1. Pick a markup format.
Google suggests using microdata, but any of the three formats below are acceptable.
• Microdata (recommended)
• Microformats
• RDFa
2. Mark up your content.
Google supports rich snippets for these content types:
• Reviews
• People
• Products
• Businesses and organizations
• Recipes
• Events
• Music
• Google also recognizes markup for video content and uses it to improve our search results.
134

Implementations – OWLIM
• OWLIM is a high-performance OWL repository
• Storage and Inference Layer (SAIL) for Sesame RDF database
• OWLIM performs OWL DLP reasoning
• It is uses the IRRE (Inductive Rule Reasoning Engine) for forward-chaining and “total
materialization”
• In-memory reasoning and query evaluation
• OWLIM provides a reliable persistence, based on RDF N-Triples
• OWLIM can manage millions of statements on desktop hardware
• Extremely fast upload and query evaluation even for huge ontologies and knowledge
bases
• OWLIM is developed by Ontotext
135

Implementations – OWLIM
• OWLIM is available as a Storage and Inference Layer (SAIL) for Sesame RDF.
• Benefits:
– Sesame’s infrastructure, documentation, user community, etc.
– Support for multiple query language (RQL, RDQL, SeRQL)
– Support for import and export formats (RDF/XML, N-Triples, N3)
136

Implementations – Jena
• Apache Jena™ is a Java framework for building Semantic Web applications.
• Jena provides a collection of tools and Java libraries to help you to develop semantic
web and linked-data apps, tools and servers.
• The Jena Framework includes:
– an API for reading, processing and writing RDF data in XML, N-triples and Turtle formats;
– an ontology API for handling OWL and RDFS ontologies;
– a rule-based inference engine for reasoning with RDF and OWL data sources;
– stores to allow large numbers of RDF triples to be efficiently stored on disk;
– a query engine compliant with the latest SPARQL specification
– servers to allow RDF data to be published to other applications using a variety of protocols,
including SPARQL
137

Implementations – Jena
• Jena stores information as RDF triples in directed graphs, and allows your code to
add, remove, manipulate, store and publish that information.
• Jena architecture overview:
138

Overview of Channels
139

Overview
1. Introduction
3. Why do it?
4. How is it done?
8. Summary
140

Pitfalls of Dissemination
• Online dissemination methods are forms of electronic marketing, BUT there are
important differences between electronic spam and conventional marketing
techniques.
• For instance, common sense dictates that there’s no reason to send an
advertisement to somebody who can’t use the product being advertised (e.g.
presenting advantages of cat food to dog owners).
• The method of dissemination must be particularly crafted for the target audience (e.g.
a message containing a large amount of technical details should not be sent to a
partner that cannot understand such details)
• The method of dissemination must be particularly crafted for the channel selected to
disseminate: the message should be shared on channels that permit it, otherwise it
will be considered spam.
141
• A dissemination channel should not be intrusive: a member should be
asked before being subscribed to a specific list, and should have the
option to unsubscribe and re-subscribe whenever he wishes so

Pitfalls of Dissemination
• The user must not be overloaded with information and must have the option of
managing the content received (e.g. receive daily/weekly digests instead of numerous
messages containing a single message)
• Close attention should be paid to the messages that are disseminated: elements that
are not of utmost important should be just posted on the website regularly (and
provide a single newsletter directing the user to the site).
• Posting elements that are not interesting for a user will be considered spam (in
essence, spam is a message from someone else that the receiver did not ask for and
does not want to have).
• The receiver should not be buried under a large number of messages – it will create
frustration as the important messages become harder to observe.
• When using chat applications as methods of dissemination, certain etiquette
elements must be taken into consideration:
– Mass messages containing advertising are considered rude
– A discrete way of disseminating is using the status update
142

Overview
1. Introduction
3. Why do it?
4. How is it done?
8. Summary
143

www.sti-innsbruck.at 144
Multi-
Channel
Publishing
Communication

Measuring impact of dissemination
What is impact and feedback?
Overview of available tools per channel
145

What is Impact and Feedback
Impact = influence, effect of the dissemination process
Feedback = evaluative information derived from the reaction or response to a
particular activity part of the dissemination
146

147
Impact of dissemination
• The impact of dissemination refers to:
− the actions that followed the dissemination
of the message;
− the effect of the message on the behavior of
the customers related to an enterprise,
the offered products and services;
− the influence to the customers and their
reaction to the message;

148
Feedback of dissemination
• Refers to the response of an audience to a message or activity.
• Giving the audience a chance to provide feedback is crucial for maintaining an open
communication climate.
• “Feedback refers to a relationship between the behavior of the speaker, the response
of the listener and the effect of the response on the further behavior of the speaker.
… In a sense, we may say that feedback, in order to be feedback, must be used as
feedback.” Theodore Clevenger, Jr., and Jack Matthews – “Feedback” – “Communication theory” edited by C.David Mortenser.
• Feedback should be measured and analysed.

149
Measuring the feedback of the dissemination activities
• Increased understanding of the impact of the dissemination processes.
– The generation of reports, regarding the dissemination activities, helps an organisation to
understand in deep the impact of their work and products to the audience by knowing what
people do not find attractive and useful.
• Evaluate current online and social network strategies.
– It is always important to evaluate a strategy and specify the lessons learned for future use.
• Look forward and plan the next business steps and objectives based on the
effectiveness of the current activities.
– Modify the current dissemination activities according to the reports in order to be more
effective in the future and our efforts more productive.

150
Measuring the feedback of the dissemination activities
• To ensure that the message disseminated has been seen by the target audience.
– By measuring the impact of the dissemination, we could be aware of the visibility that our
message achieved.
• To verify whether the message has been understood by the target audience.
– The disseminated message may be well distributed and visible, but not understood by the
audience in the way that the enterprise would like to.
• To quantify the reach of the dissemination.
– It is important to be able to produce reports with metrics about the effectiveness of the
dissemination. This is realizable only by establishing ways to measure the impact.

151
What should we measure to specify the feedback?
• Social Media Exposure
– How many people did you reach with your message?
• Appeal of your message
– How many people listened to the entire message?
– If the majority of people stopped listening to your message, when did they stop? Was it due
to the content, the implementation of the message or the medium?
• Engagement
– How many people actually reacted to your message?
It is important to find out how many people reacted after the dissemination reached them. Did
they forward the message to their social circle?

152
What should we measure to specify the feedback?
• Influence
– Measure how influential the people who engaged with, and reacted to your message. This
reflects the influence of the enterprise. The enterprise should be sure the messages are
reaching different kinds of people, including average users and influential users.
• Message converted to action
– The ultimate goal of the enterprise is to monetize the
dissemination of products and services.
– Measuring how the disseminated messages were
converted to transactional actions.
– What was the Return On Investment (ROI) and
the Social Return On Investment (SROI)

Measuring Impact of Dissemination
Why and What to measure?
153

Overview of criteria for measuring
• Views and clicks
• Unary feedback
• Binary feedback
• Ratings
• Re-publication
• Comments:
(Sentiment of comments)
• Replies
• Platform specific
154
What syntactical and concrete measuring units to consider?

Measuring units for static broadcasting
• Traffic Rank:
– Traffic Rank among all sites
– Traffic Rank among its category
– Reputation (by checking on websites like alexa.com or ranking.com)
• Reach:
– Estimated percentage of global internet users who visit
– Number of visitors
– Number of unique visitors
– Number of recurring visitors
• Audience
– Audience Demographics (age, gender, has children, education, location, etc)
• Page views:
– Estimated percentage of global page views
– Estimated daily unique pageviews per user
155

• Percentage of site viewed
• Bounce rate:
– Estimated percentage of visits to website that consist of a single page view
• Time on site:
– Estimated daily time on site (mm:ss)
• Search:
– Estimated percentage of visits that came from a search engine
• Connections:
– Sites linking in
– Links pointing to this site
– Link popularity ranking
• Reviews
• Click stream
• (for Wikis) number of mentions of interest topic (e.g. hotel name)
156

Measuring units for dynamic broadcasting
157
Type Tool Unit (number of…)
News feeds RSS Subscriptions, Web site visits
Newsletters Subscriptions, Web site visits
Email Replies
Microblogging Twitter Tweets, Followers, Retweets, Mentions
Tumblr Notes, Reblog
Blogs Comments, Sharing
Social Networks Facebook Likes, Comments
Google +1, Comments, Share
LinkedIn Comment, Like, Flag
Chat Skype Replies, Contacts
Google Talk Replies, Contacts
Facebook Messenger Replies, Contacts
Yahoo! Messenger Replies, Contacts

News feeds (e.g. RSS)
• Subscribers
• Web site visitors originating from newsfeed
Newsletters
• Subscribers
• Web site visitors originating from newsfeed
Email
• Replies
Blogs
• Comments
• Sharing per individual post
158

Twitter
• Tweets
• Followers
• Retweets
• Mentions
Tumblr
• Number of Notes
• Number of Reblogs
159
Microblogging

Facebook
• Likes per page, Likes per post
• Comments per page, Comments per post
Google+
• +1 per post, +1 per page
• Sharing
LinkedIn
• Comments
• Likes
• Flag
160
Social Networks

e.g. Skype, Google Talk, Facebook Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger
• Number of Contacts
• Replies
161
Chats

Measuring units for Sharing
162
Type Tool Unit (number of …)
Slides SlideShare Share, comments, follow
Images Flickr Comments, faves
Videos YouTube Comments, likes, dislikes,
share, subscribe to the
channel
VideoLectures Popularity (star system),
reviews, comments
Social bookmarking Delicious Stacks, links, comments,
favorite, saves
Digg diggs
StumbleUpon Like, dislike
Social News Website Reddit Comment, vote up, vote
down

Slideshare
• Likes per page, Likes per post
Flickr
• Comments
• Favorites
163
Slides
Images

YouTube
• Comments
• Video replies
• Likes and Dislikes
• Sharing
• Subscribe to channel
VideoLectures
• Popularity (star system)
• Reviews
• Comments
164
Videos

Delicious
• Stacks
• Links
• Comments
• Favorites
• Saves
165
Digg
• Diggs
StumblUpon
• Like
• Dislike
Social News Website (e.g. Reddit)
• Comments
• Vote up or Vote down
Social Bookmarking

Measuring units for Online Discussion Groups
• Posts
• Replies to posts
• Discussions started (threads)
• Number of members
Measuring units for Forum
• Number of discussions (threads)
• Number of members
• Number of comments
166

Resulted user generated content as means of measuring content
• Number of times the dissemination channels have been mentioned as sources
• Number of times topics presented by the dissemination channels have appeared in
unrelated websites or user generated content
• Number of responses
167

Why and What to measure?
168

Social Media impact
• Use automated tools to collect and report customer feedback metrics
– Social media monitoring tools (Radian6, Alterian) to:
– Listening platforms:
– Crawlers
– Web/online information analytics
Brand communities
• A brand community is a specialized non-geographically bound community, based on
a structures set of social relationships among admirers of a brand (Muniz and
O’Guinn, 2001)
• Feedback and impact can be measured by employing analytics inside the community
itself (surveys, polls, etc.)
169

Static broadcasting:
• Use of websites like alexa.com, ranking.com to observe information regarding traffic
(rank, reputation, number of visitors, page views, etc. )
170

Feeds:
• Web statistics
• Third-party RSS feed hosts (e.g. FeedBurner)
• Other (third party) solutions:
– Generating unique URLs for each subscriber
– Anonymity vs. exploration of individual user habits
– Such third party services are often only interested in collecting data
– Uniquely named transparent images
• Uniquely named transparent 1x1 graphics can be added to the description field of an
RSS feed
• Use standard web logs to see the number of times the image is viewed and
determine the number of times the feed was accessed
171

172
Newsletters:
• Number of subscribers (no un-intrusive method of verifying whether the information
has been received)
Email and mailing lists:
• Measuring impact:
– Questions:
• Who read my emails?
• How many backlinks were produced?
• BUT: answering this question is difficult!
– Read-receipts:
• MDN - Message Disposition Notifications (inserted into mail header)
• Must be requested prior to sending the email
• BUT:
o Highly depended on email application used (different implementations, or not supported at all)
o Can be turned off by user

• Email tracking:
– Web beacons: embedding of a tiny, invisible tracking image into email
– Only working for HTML emails (not plain-text messages)
– An individual tracking code is referenced when an event occurs
• Message is opened or a link is clicked
– Events are stored in database and used for statistics as click-through rates or operates
– BUT: Images and links can be turned off in email applications, spam-filters (!!)
173

Microblogs (e.g. Twitter)
• Twitter account has no
built-in statistics tool
– Only number of tweets, of people following, and of
followers
• New: Twitter for Businesses offers detailed
statistics (not free service)
• Third-party tools:
– e.g. Topsy Social Analytics, TwitterCounter, …
– Track number of mentions (for hashtags and
accounts)
– Track retweets
174

Social networks
• Facebook
– Facebook Insight for Pages, Apps and
Websites
– Facebook Insights provide aggregated, non-
personally identifiable information to Facebook
Page owners and Facebook Platform
developers
– Statistics for Likes, Reach, and Talking about
this
– Insight API allows access to these statistics for
Platform developers
175

• Google+
– No built-in statistics tool
– Track +1, sharing and comments per post
• LinkedIn
– Number of connections
– New people in your network
– Profile stats
• Who’s viewed your profile
• Appearances in search
176

Chat
• Chat should not be used as a main dissemination method due to its very nature (one-
to-one conversations)
• In particular situations, instant chatting can be employed to disseminate to a small
number of people information that concerns only them (e.g. a skype conference
disseminating the results of a project management meeting to the development team)
• It is a method to address any concerns or ensure engagement.
177

Sharing
SlideShare
• Free Account: Statistics per presentation - Number of:
Views (Embed, on slideshare), Favorites, Downloads,
Comments
178
• Pro Account:
– Analytics summary
– Statistics per presentation
– Latest tweets
– All views (timeline)
– Downloads
– LinkedIn Dashboard

179
SlideShare Pro accounts statistics
Analytics summary
• Total Views / Favorites /
Downloads / Tweets / Likes
• Most active presentations
• Most search keywords
• Locations

Flickr Free account
• Photos’ views, comments
• Set of photos’ views, comments
• Popular
– Interestingness: “Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when;
who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing.
Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic content and stories are
added to Flickr.” [2]
– Views
– Favorites
– Comments
180

Flickr Pro account
• Account overview
• Individual photos
• Daily referrers
181

YouTube Analytics
182

• YouTube Demographics
183

• YouTube Audience retention:
– Absolute audience retention: How often each moment of your video is watched.
– Relative audience retention: Video’s ability to retain viewers relative to all YouTube videos
of similar length. (limitation: video views>300
184

VideoLectures
• Lecture page
– Information about:
• Views
• Lecture popularity (stars)
• Social networks counters (Tweets, Likes, Google+, LinkedIn shares, Delicious,
Mendeley)
• Conference page
• Most popular lectures (based on views)
• Top voted lectures
• Author page
• Views of her/his lectures
185

Social Bookmarking:
• Visibility of links shared
– Saves
• Visibility of grouped bookmarks shared (playlists for the web)
– Views
– Followers
– Social networks counters (Tweets, Likes)
– Comments
186

Collaboration
• The success of collaboration can either be observed instantly (e.g. a finished Google
Document) or can be observed over a long period of time by assessing the projects
and responses resulting from the collaboration session (e.g. creating software
platforms using information presented in a workshop)
187

Measuring group impact – what to measure
• Size (number of members) – assess whether the group should be large or small
• Interconnectedness and network density
• Shared Language – a successful group shares the same language
• Communication activity – meaningful and frequent input
• Noise level – low access level
• Access level
• Resource availability – which members and how many members can access the
group’s resources (conversations, shared documents, etc.)
• Use third party applications (such as social media monitoring tools)
188

Measuring group impact – built in methods
189
Characteristics Google Groups Yahoo Groups Facebook
Groups
LinkedIn
Groups
Xing
Groups
Show number of
members
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Show number of
posts
Yes (and the top
posters)
Yes No Yes Yes
“Health” (activity)
measuring
mechanism
5 star rating
system (users)
Internal, owner
can add other
mechanisms (e.g.
“like” buttons on
pictures);
Management
Features to track
activity
Like button
on group
page and
individual
comments
Internal Internal
Polls No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Group statistics No No No dashboard Yes

Measuring group impact – built in methods – example interface
190

Semantic Based Communication
• Increased SEO
• Easier reach of information
• Same measuring units as above can be employed
191

Overview
1. Introduction
3. Why do it?
4. How is it done?
8. Summary
192

Summary
• Dissemination
– To sow and scatter principles, ideas, opinions for growth and propagation, such as seed
– Refers to the process of broadcasting a message to the public without direct feedback form
the audience
• Dissemination Channel
– Means of exchanging information in the online space
– A “Place” where one can find or leave information
• Purposes of dissemination
– for awareness
– for understanding
– for action
193

Summary
Dissemination Channels: Classification and Impact Measurement
• Static Broadcasting:
– Fixed content
– User can usually not reply
– e.g. printed press, websites/homepages, newsletters…
– Impact measurement:
• Measuring units: e.g. traffic rank, reach, page views, time on site, reviews, click
streams,…
• Tools: e.g. websites like alexa.com, ranking.com,…
194

Summary
Dissemination Channels: Classification and Impact Measurement
• Dynamic Broadcasting:
– Small piece of content dependent upon constrains such as time and location
– Mobile, variable content
– e.g. blogs, twitter, email lists
– Impact measurement:
• Measuring units: e.g. subscriptions, web site visits, replies, shares, contacts
• Tools: e.g. web statistics, read-receipts, facebook insights,…
195

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