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

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

3. 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

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

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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

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

10. Political Blog
Figure 4. PunditMom.Blogspot.com

11. Personal Blog
Figure 5. My Husband’s Blog

12. Community Blog
Figure 6. LiveJournal community for LibraryThing Users

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

14. 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

15. 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

16. Growth of Wiki’s
Figure 8. Wikipedia Database Size Statistics,

17. 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

18. Wikipedia
Figure 9. Wikipedia’s Introduction Page

19. Business use of Wikis
Figure 10. Smallbusiness.com Wiki

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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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)

24. 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

25. 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

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

27. Feed Readers/Aggregators
Figure 13. Bloglines Feed Reader

28. 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

29. 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!

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

31. Citations
Tim O'Reilly. "What is Web 2.0" at
Kevin Lim Inju. "Theory: Intro to Web 2.0" at
Markus Angermeier. "Web extended mindcloudmap" at
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.