observer service ongoing research (started in feb 07)

Nicolas MaisonneuveINSEAD CALThttp://www.calt.insead.edu/

It’s about

• Context: The belonging to several virtual Communities 2.0 (of practice/interest)

exposing their activity data with a web feed (RSS/Atom) mechanism

• Problem: Situation awareness overload

• Approach: Mechanism to create a customizable perception of the communities’

activity

• Futur works

Context

Community 1Community 2

Community 3

Common situation on the web:

* Profileration of virtual communities (of interest , practice)

* A user is a member of several communities

But:

*He wishes to be aware of each community’s activity

* Without needing to go to their websites

Community 1Community 2

Community 3

Common solution:Subscribing

* by email newsletter (old school)

* by web feed (current method)

(For novice) What is a web Feed?A web feed is a webpage containing a stream of items.

* easy (un)subscription: automatic detection by the current browsers (no possible by email)

* aggregation of different sources (no possible by email)

* Understanding of the content by the computer (no possible by email)

Context

Community 1Community 2

Community 3

Current common problem:

+ many sources to track

+ for each , a lot of internal activities

+ limited capacity to absorb all the information

= awareness overload problem problem to filter the alert (bad /good alert)

Global stream of activity with different kind of activities inside

Problem

Problem

Community 1Community 2

Community 3

Current (partial) solution on the web:

* exposing multiple web feeds focused on different and popular aspects of the community’s activity:

- about the last posts,

- about the current hot topics,

- about the last comments on a given post

* possibility to subscribe to a specific set of web feeds according to the user’s need

Problem / approach

it’s sometime difficult for the user to find on the website the "perfect" web feed focussing exactly on the item he wants to track, with the good granularity.

Our approach is not to multiply the number of streams but to be able , for the user, to create his own set of web feeds according to his interest/social network.

Observer Service

OBSERVER

SERVICE

Stream of events from the environment (e.g.

from different sources)

My intended perception

Like the human visual system providing a way to focus only on a subpart of what a human actually views,

the observer service allows a user (or an agent) to focus his perception on a certain aspect of the activity of the community according to his intentions.

Observer Service

Community 1Community 2

Community 3

Solution:

create your own set of channels of observation according to your intention/interest/social netwok.

Perception Module(observer service)

Creation of a web feed by the user to be aware about a given aspect of the global activity according to his intention

Global stream of activity with different kind of activities inside

Observer Service: focus aspectExamples:

I want to be aware only about

•People oriented activity:

•When new people are connected

•the activity of a friend in a given community..

•the activity around my published posts (e.g. who read it)

•Resource oriented activity:

•new messages related to a given topic/issue

•only popular/important messages about a topic because I’m not so much a fan about that topic

OBSERVER

SERVICE

Stream of events from the environment (e.g.

from different sources)

My intended perception

Observer Service: granularity aspect

0

5

10

15

20

25

userA userB userC userD

members of my network/community#

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05

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idea

com

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busin

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tech

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Example of user’s profile for the topic aspect. The distribution of the thresholds of interest by topic. (for a given topic the more the level is high, the more the messages about this topic are filtered to receive only the important ones)

Example of user’s profile for the SN aspect. The distribution of the thresholds of interest for the member of his SN/community. (for a given user, the more the level is high, the more the messages from this user are filtered to receive only the important ones)

Configuring my perception of the environment (i.e. the information I will receive from it) according to:- my interest (I’m a priori more interested by posts about technology than about business).- my affinity in a Social Network (I’m a priori more interested by new posts from my friend user A than the work of the user B)

How create a channel?Model of an event

Event = {user, action/type, resource (optional), date, source}.

Arborescence of the event’s properties

Description

event.type The type of event (creating, reading, etc..)

event.source The source’s name where the event comes (a specific community , skype or email, web feed)

event.resource.id The ‘s id of the resource

event.resource.tag The tag belonging to the resource , (e.g. the message’s topic)

event.resource.type (e.g. a message, a conversation , a user)

event.resource.activitylevel The level of activity (e.g. number of time a message has been read, or could be the % of diffusion in the community (i.e ratio readers/members)

event.author The author’s name of the event

event.author.tag The author’s tag (e.g. the author’s role, the author’s team)

How create a channel?Usage (no user interface for the moment, just an url to create)URL: http://perceptionmodule/watch

Arguments: A combination of criteria following the format: event.property = value according to the event model describe

Results: A web feed

Examples: A member wishes to be informed: When new threads are created.http://perceptionmodule/watch?event.ressource.type=thread&event.type=creating

When of new threads are created on the “technology” subject. http://perceptionmodule/watch?event.ressource.type=thread&event.type=creating&event.resource.tag=technology

Only about important threads on meeting (i.e. a high level of activity).http://perceptionmodule/watch?event.ressource.type=thread&event.type=creating&event.resource.activitylevel=20&event.resource.tag=meeting

… see Delivrable 3.2 for more examples

So the user can create several web feeds to perceive the activity of the environment according to his profile of interest/social network (e.g. configuring each web feed for a given topic with a given threshold of of interest), as described in the slide #11

Futur works

• Research aspect – Attention model for the social activity: use the analogy with the visual

attention models (visual sampling / visual search used in aviation and robotics)

– Integration of attention profiles (APML)– Improve the event model with social and activity properties to be able to

filter/rank events (e.g. include a level of reputation for an author)– (information ranking model according to a selected attention profile)

• Development aspect– UI for the end-user (web2.0 widget)– Integrate conversations from email/skype (perception module)– Integration of visualization (people tag cloud as a useful visualization

tool in a SN context , see my blog http://nico.maisonneuve.free.fr)

Watch Service