RDFa and the Semantic Web: Why Should Online Publishers Care?
If you're an online publisher and have engaged a semantic web enthusiast in conversation, I feel for you: it was probably a confusing experience. Suddenly awash in eye-glazing phrases like ”RDF”, “OWL” and "RDFa", you wondered: "what exactly does this stuff have to do with my online publishing site?" Well, from a non-techie to you, I promise: the semantic web matters to online publishing. Let's take a gentle, friendly walk through it.
You Lost Me At "Semantic."
Could they have chosen a more nebulous phrase than "Semantic Web?" Probably not. So here's what it means: semantic web sites "know stuff." Semantic web sites are smarter because they have tools embedded within that "know" that you're talking about Paris, France, not Paris, Texas, and not Paris Hilton. They know what each article is titled, and who the author is. Then with that knowledge, smarter sites can make linked connections to related data sources. Perhaps more practical still in the short term, they can share these data details with the search engines, and the search engines can then more easily find your article about Paris, France when someone searches for "Paris, France."
Yep, that's what the big deal is about: telling search engines, readers, and software from other systems, detailed, correct information about the content that's on your site. That's it. Oh, and "web 3.0" is just what we call the vision for an internet full of these "smarter" web sites.
Now, Why Would my Readers Care About a "Smarter" Site?
Search engine optimization is great, but a smarter site doesn't just help the search engines. It also helps your readers. And really, that's who we care about here, because they're your subscribers, and the greatest advocates for your site. Here's how smarty-pants web sites help them:
1. They bring readers to you: When a niche publication's article on Paris, France suddenly shows up in search results, new readers reach that publication that may never have found it otherwise.
2. They help readers sift through all that information. There's just so much content out there. News cycles are faster, and chances are, more news is coming into your site, as well as going out of your site, through RSS feeds. Your readers could use some help finding what's important to them each time they visit your site.
3. They give readers a reason to stick around. When your site is "smart" enough to know you're reading about New York City's Fashion Week, it can suggest that you read a related article about Milan's Fashion Week. Smarter sites can suggest similar content and help readers understand the context of what they're reading, and allow them to pursue topics that they're interested in.
But How? Do I Have to "Tag" Every Piece of my Content?
Short answer: absolutely not.
So, we agree that as an online publisher, presumably with a lot of articles, videos, photos, interviews, and features, having a "smarter" web site could be useful. But keeping up with "tagging" every piece of content is just a no-go. It wouldn't be efficient, and honestly, it probably wouldn't even be possible.
And that's where those mysterious "embedded tools" I mentioned above come in.
I can't speak for all of the semantic web tools out there, but I know that two really key workhorses in our "make your web site smarter" equation are: Calais and RDFa. Calais, built by Thomson Reuters, is the equivalent of a little semantic tagging hamster in a tiny web 3.0 wheel, feverishly reading and tagging every piece of content you have. Automatically tagging it! The first time I saw it, I said "that is magic." And it kind of is. Because once all that content is tagged, you can write other modules to stuff with that information. For instance, our "More Like This" related content suggestion engine can tell your readers "you should really stay on the site awhile longer and read this information, too. It's right up your alley."
Now, about RDFa. So, tags are great, but to be really super smart, your site needs to be able to know not just that Fashion Week is mentioned in your article, but that the title of your article is "Fashion Week Takes Over New York," that the author is Joe Smith, it was datelined in New York and so forth. RDFa (Resource Description Framework in Attributes) is, well, a set of extra data embedded in the HTML of your site that gives these fields of data away to the web browser. It tells your web site that certain pieces of information are "titles" and other pieces of information are "authors" and then gathers all that important information for those helpful search engines.
So the take-home point here is this: making your web site smarter can be automated. You don't have to do this all yourself. But you do have to make sure your web site is built with these kinds of tools in place. Your content management system or platform should be using semantic web tools, not just search engine optimization tools. The tools of semantic web are not weird trendy concepts that nerds talk about at parties: they are the tools that will bring more readers to your site, and get them to stick around for longer.
It's Difficult, Expensive, and Proprietary, Isn't it?
As a matter of fact, no, no, and no. In the case of OpenPublish, it's all in the open source distribution. The semantic features of OpenPublish come standard and "out of the box." Once OpenPublish is customized for your unique publication, you can "flip the switch" on these features on Monday and be semantic webbing it up by Tuesday. The software is out there, and it's open source (which means it's also getting smarter every day, thanks to a community of developers who care about it more than they care about a lot of things).
When we set out to build OpenPublish, we didn't want to just build yet another online publishing content management system - we wanted to build something smarter. We hope that now, you feel a bit "smarter" too -- or at least ready to bust out "RDFa" in your next semantic web discussion.
PS: Yes, thanks to these tools, this blog post is probably now tagged with both "semantic web" and "hamster wheel." Figure that one out, Google.
Comments
Post new comment