Social Web Evolution: Integrating Semantic Applications and Web 2.0 Technologies

Citation

du Preez, M. (2009), "Social Web Evolution: Integrating Semantic Applications and Web 2.0 Technologies", Online Information Review, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 1207-1208. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520911011142

Web 2.0 and the semantic web refer to a perceived second generation of internet‐based services. These include interactive social networking sites (e.g. Friendster, Tribe, Flickr, Facebook and LinkedIn), wikis, communication tools such as Skype, mashups and folksonomies that emphasise online collaboration and sharing among users. These technologies have many possible applications for knowledge, learning and human development through the support of knowledge services for social networks. However, little research has been conducted on their value for businesses.

The recently published Social Web Evolution: Integrating Semantic Applications and Web 2.0 Technologies explores Web 2.0's potential to increase knowledge‐related performance through a better use of the intellectual assets and business services that form parts of a global economy and society. The social and human issues of web technology applications, within the context of this book, are as important as the technical issues that previously tended to receive most attention. Through this approach the editors hope to initiate a dialogue across the social, psychological and technical views of the field.

Nineteen chapters address various semantic web or Web 2.0 topics that vary from exploring a professional social network system aimed at supporting learning in the workplace to user‐centred design principles for online learning communities. This last chapter introduces the authors' involvement in the development of a distributed community of practice to acquire an understanding of people's interaction with technology and the ensuing communication, feedback and control mechanisms that are necessary for people to take ownership of the design and implementation process.

Information organisation is a personal interest and a great concern in the Web 2.0 environment. Two chapters pay attention to this issue. These are Chapters 11 and 13 that deal with the way in which folksonomies and ontologies are used to organise information in social web projects. Folksonomies are based in assigned text tags to different resources such as photos, web pages, and documents. Chapter 11 explores the use of two classical pattern matching techniques, Levenshtein distance and Hamming distance, to identify syntactic variations of tags in order to reduce the existing noise in certain folksonomies. The Levenshtein distance is used for imperfect string matching and Hamming distance for perfect string matching. Chapter 13 introduces the application of ontologies to the tourism business to support the knowledge management process by overcoming some of the limitations in current knowledge management systems.

Reference lists at the end of each chapter and a compilation of references complement the contents of the book and provide additional data to support some of the concepts, principles and research results that are explored in the book. A very short (and very unsatisfactory) index concludes the volume. The index does not do justice to an excellent volume of research articles on Web 2.0. The inclusion of two tables of contents (one detailed) does not really solve the problem of accessibility that is created by the lack of a more comprehensive index.

Social Web Evolution is a reference work for academics, practitioners, policy makers,and government officers who are eager to learn more about Web 2.0 and the social web. This is an essential publication for those interested in the perceived second generation of internet‐based services.