Guy Berger(Revised version of

presentation given at conference on Journalism

Education & Training: The Challenges

17 October 2008, Stellenbosch)

In an ever-crowdedever-crowded online universe, the distinctiveness of a given journalistic product can be dwarfed or even missed completely

Especially because much online consumption is searchsearch, rather than brand, drivendriven. Also: think RSS.

• Find/Populate content in trustedtrusted places• Especially where your target people go…• But don’t tread on toestread on toes. • Seize the momentmoment – topicality talks.• Become a brand for “quality” – trust is key. • LinkLink to others as well – send traffic away.• Cross promotepromote and cross platform (Twitter,

blogs, Facebook …). • But even then – the web is awash….But even then – the web is awash….

David Weinberger perceptively

argues that the solutionsolution to an information-overloaded

environment is more more information.information.

Social network recommendations Social network recommendations surface content. Low-level ok.

But critical importance of understanding & wielding meta-datameta-data

You’ve seen tag clouds tag clouds – that’s just one functionality.

Internet - documents to database

cf. blogs, flickr, delicious, etc

I wanted pictures of an opening dooropening door. Searched on Flickr for “door, ajar” That depended on the image having been

captionedcaptioned with those words. I decided I wanted to narrow it to a glassglass

door. That depended on whetherwhether the

photographer thought it significant enough to mentionmention that the door was a glass one.

“Bird” = midlevelmidlevel abstraction “Male frigate bird” = lowerlevellowerlevel Do you note “blueblue” sky & “silhouette”? More abstractMore abstract like “flight”? “freedom”? SynonymsSynonyms?: “flying” / “in the air” / “aloft”

or “liberty”? Google score: sky (50 points), bird (60 points),

soaring (120 points), or frigate bird (150 points). Well, it depends…Well, it depends…

Inter-coder reliability Inter-coder reliability is the same issue…

Audio, Video, Flash…. Check out: http://www.bivings.com/

Google: Suggest and Adwords’ Keyword Traffic Estimator Tool and Trends

Microsoft: AdCenter Keyword Forecast Tool WordTracker: Basic Keyword Suggestion Tool Keyword Discovery: Basic Search Term

Suggestion Tool

Not so good: Not so good: <title>Home</title> Better: Better: <title>Webmaster Central home page</title> Best:Best: <title>Webmaster Central home page | Search

engine tips and tools for webmasters</title> To be avoided To be avoided (your site may be seen as spam): <title>Webmaster Central seo optimization

search engine search engine google websearch google searchresults improve search results seo optimize search searching serps</title>

Google also understands: <meta namemeta name=“description”

content=“the keywords / phrases / text that is inserted here can also show up sometimes as part of the snippet shown in search results”>

refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google's search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site's ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

Google News requires URLs have at >2>2 digits digits. Ensure web addresses web addresses include key words. >> 5 keywords 5 keywords in a Page <Title> dilutesdilutes each. Use creative headlines creative headlines as anchor textas anchor text for for

linkslinks to the article (aka 'linkbait') - but make actual headlines literal.

Incorporate keywords from the meta-data Incorporate keywords from the meta-data in <title> into the headline and deckin <title> into the headline and deck. Not as easy as it sounds, but perhaps the new copy skill for the digital age.

What would a searcher doWhat would a searcher do? What wordswords & languagelanguage wd they use? Do you have the terms as meta-data? In headlines and intros? In tags and keywords? It’s more than technical SEO…It’s more than technical SEO…

Taxonomy: how Dewey used to work – categories and siloscategories and silos.

Based on physical model of physical model of meaningmeaning: you classify books for a shelf.

You overcome exclusivity by having physical physical index cardsindex cards that cater to overlaps in categorisation.

Note: Cards are smallersmaller than referents.

Resource Descriptor Framework Resource Descriptor Framework & Uniform Resource IdentifiersUniform Resource Identifiers for categories.

Digital Object Identifiers Digital Object Identifiers (different to URLs) (what, vs where).

Taxonomy:

Folksonomy:

• Folksonomies – untrained, non-librarians, giving horizontal tags.

• “A folksonomy is a user-generated user-generated classificationclassification, emerging through bottom-up consensus” (Emanuele Quintarelli)

• Power connected to aggregatingaggregating…• Without a social distributed context, tags

are just flat keywordsjust flat keywords.

• Basic idea is simply to get people to shareshare content annotatedannotated with tags.

• You can develop a metadata vocabularyvocabulary, performing metadata-driven queries (also using multiple tags at a time), monitoring changes, discovering popular metadata. (Jon Udell)

Building Building on past on past social social taggingtagging::

Blue sky Blue sky taggingtagging::

• A narrow folksonomy (as the one of FlickrFlickr) is the result of a number of individuals tagging (using one or more tags) differentdifferent items for later personal retrieval.

• Broad Folksonomy: Del.icio.us is the result of manymany people tagging the samesame item for shared use.

• The goal is a metadata ecologyis a metadata ecology. Emanuele Quintarelli.

• An electronic catalogue “entry” can be even bigger bigger than the object than the object – beyond an index card’s limitations of space (cf Amazon).

• But free text search means: every wordevery word in an can serve as metadata – in the sense of being searchable,

but then there’s no metameta-data!• All taxonomy categorisation and all folksonomy

keywords helps searchability.• But even so, computers are stoopidstoopid…

BT: broad term - microorganisms

NT: narrow term – ecoli RT: related term: gut UF: use e-coli and ecolli for

“ecoli” (latter is preferred)

• A story on a sports match might include value-basedvalue-based tags tags like “bully”, “macho”, or “future olympiad” .

• Or analytical words like “fandom” or “hero” or “racism in sport” or “Low GI diet” – terms that are not in the that are not in the story as suchstory as such, but which identify some of the meanings in and of it.

• De Saussure De Saussure saw that the train from Paris to Geneva was only meaningful because of the relationshiprelationship, not physical coaches.

• Meaningfulness is a function of relationships: between people, places and thingspeople, places and things.

• The existing web moving from silos of content, to googels of undifferentiated datagoogels of undifferentiated data.

• We need context relations for meaningfulness.

• For example, you do a story about unhappy workers on a winefarm in Stellenbosch.

• The story refers to Clay Wine EstatesClay Wine Estates, locates it outside Stellenbosch, and the owner as Paul Clayton.

• It does not give phrases like “Western CapeWestern Cape” or “South AfricaSouth Africa” – that ‘s assumed.

• It does not mention the names of winesthe names of wines produced at the estate.

“Stellar” and “Star” wine brands come come from from CWE; labourlabour = a synonymsynonym for “workersworkers”

Stellenbosch is in is in the Western Cape, SA. By mappingmapping these unwritten unwritten

connectionsconnections, computer intelligence can linklink youryour storystory to them

A search for “labour, Western Cape, Stellar, Star”, will then findwill then find your story…

• Automates some triplestriples linkages: M&G did people, cities, countries, companies. (Meta data then inserted into text)

• But automation still requires you to think … what levels of abstraction are significant, what languages, meta-content judgements of the story, are meaningful meaningful significances significances …

• Don’t let a CMSCMS kill yr folksonomies, etc.

• “Enhance a user’s connection to a given place using location-based technologies such as GPS-enabled devices and interactive maps.”

Test: tag this icon:Test: tag this icon:

Get shared tagsshared tags as soon as you can when there’s a common common eventevent or discussion on the go. For instance: HA2008, mobileactive08

That allows the coverage be aggregatedaggregated to best effect.

Try this one!

Guy Berger Koala Bear Marsupial Claws Claude Brisbane

Sanctuary Denim Cuddle Nerves Thinning hair…

• Internet - documents to databasedatabase• Social networks Social networks = part-answer• Metadata: all over… (title, Metadata: all over… (title,

heads, text, alt=)heads, text, alt=)• MeaningMeaning is in relationships…• AIAI (eg. link “Brisbane” to “Queensland” &

“Australia” without manually doing it).• But you still have to use your nogginuse your noggin!

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