User Information Architecture: Blogs, Wikis, and RSS Julia Mitschke Thursday, September 28, 2006 University of Texas, iSchool

Overview What is Web 2.0? Blogs Wiki’s RSS Information Architecture Ideas and Concerns

Introduction to Web 2.0 Web 2.0 is a transitional era From static websites and user surfing of early web development era towards a more dynamic and interactive World Wide Web From professionally developed web content to user generated content

Web 2.0 Examples Figure 1. Tim O’Reilly, “What is Web 2.0?”

Web 2.0 Concept Map Participation Remixability Usability Design Blogs Wiki’s Tagging/Folksonomy Recommendation Remixability RSS Usability Design Figure 2. “Web 2.0 - extended mindcloudmap” by Markus Angermeier

Blogs Blog, or Weblog An individual or shared online journal where people can post periodic entries Range in scale from one blogger to an entire community of writers Participation: Commenting vs. non-interactive

Blogs and Bloggers 54% of bloggers say they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else Most have blogged 3 years or less Figure 3. Pew Report on Bloggers 2006

Types of blog content Personal use: Online Diaries (37% of bloggers) Commentary or news on different subjects: Politics Food Entertainment Sports Local news Content can include Text Images Links to other blogs, web pages, and other media

Blog service providers Web hosted blog services: LiveJournal (13% of bloggers) MySpace (9%) Blogger (6%) Xanga (2%)

Political Blog Figure 4. PunditMom.Blogspot.com

Personal Blog Figure 5. My Husband’s Blog

Community Blog Figure 6. LiveJournal community for LibraryThing Users

Photo or Media Blog Figure 7. Terrorkitten.com/iblog

Information Architecture of Blogs Organization of content is chronological Similar to journal Blogs are NOT organized by content “Categories” functionality available in some services but not yet widely used Some services provide search functionality of archived blog pages But content on blogs is valuable Blogs are often highly ranked Our job is to find ways to improve architecture and usability of Blogs

Wiki’s Wiki comes from a Hawaiian-language term “wiki wiki” which means “fast” or “quick” A website that allows visitors or subscribers to easily add, remove and otherwise edit available content Some wiki’s are highly moderated and some are more self-policing

Growth of Wiki’s Figure 8. Wikipedia Database Size Statistics, 2001 - 2006

Uses of Wiki’s Collaborative authoring for any group project: Class study guide Brainstorming for creative or business group efforts Shared resources for research groups User support and documentation for software development

Wikipedia Figure 9. Wikipedia’s Introduction Page

Business use of Wikis Figure 10. Smallbusiness.com Wiki

Gaming Community Wiki Figure 11. Wiki for a Lord of the Rings Online Gaming Community

Strengths & Weaknesses of Wiki’s Why users like them Wiki’s are great for collaborative projects But… Some wiki’s require knowledge of mark-up languages Some WYSIWYG wiki editors don’t work in other browsers or platforms

Information Architecture of Wiki’s Wiki’s allow much more architectural control than blogs Wiki’s are indexable and searchable Can create new pages & categories, or edit/delete content on the fly Can still be a structural mess because ad-hoc information creation becomes unorganized

What is RSS and who uses it? Really Simple Syndication An XML-based system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites No more surfing--the content comes to you! As of 2005, only 5% of internet users had RSS reader/aggregators (Pew Report)

Who publishes RSS Feeds and how can you tell? Webmaster puts their content into a standardized format and publishes a feed: Blog users News publishers Government agencies Lots of personal AND commercial sites

RSS Feed Reader/Aggregator User can view and organize the RSS feed through an application The reader checks the user’s list of feeds on behalf of user and displays any updated content Readers/aggregator types: standalone programs browser extensions web-based applications

Search engine providers for RSS feeds Figure 12. My Google Homepage with RSS feeds

Feed Readers/Aggregators Figure 13. Bloglines Feed Reader

IA of RSS Structure is primarily chronological in most readers Feeds are based upon updates as they occur Inherently dynamic Feeds can be included in almost any part of a website Potential for interesting organization and use of RSS is just beginning

For your consideration… Web 2.0 is dynamic, interactive and often user-generated online content Popularity of these formats will continue to grow Many users are new to creating web content Responsibility of our field to find ways to help structure and present user-created content in an organized and usable way!

Questions? Figure 14. Foxtrot Comic Strip “When is Web 2.1 due out?

Citations Tim O'Reilly. "What is Web 2.0" at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html Kevin Lim Inju. "Theory: Intro to Web 2.0" at http://theory.wikispaces.com/introweb20 Markus Angermeier. "Web 2.0 - extended mindcloudmap" at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kosmar/62381076/ Amanda Lenhart. “Bloggers: a portrait of the Internet’s new storytellers”. Pew Internet Project: July 19, 2006. Lee Rainie. “The State of Blogging”. Pew Internet Project: January 2005.