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28 November 2005 ACM QUEUE rants: [email protected]

Social Computing F O C U S

DAVID MILLEN, JONATHAN FEINBERG, and BERNARD KERR, IBM

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ACM QUEUE November 2005 29 more queue: www.acmqueue.com

social bookmarkinin the Enterprise

One of the greatest challenges facingpeople who use large information

spaces is to remember and retrieveitems that they have previouslyfound and thought to be interesting.One approach to this problem is toallow individuals to save particular

search strings to re-create the searchin the future. Another approach has

been to allow people to create personalcollections of materialfor example, the use of

electronic citation bundles (called binders ) in the ACMDigital Library. Collections of citations can be createdmanually by readers or through execution of (and alertingto) a saved search.

Perhaps the most familiar approach to rendinginformation on the Web has been through the use of personal bookmarks, supported by various Web browsers.For example, the Mozilla browser supports the creationof collections of URLs, which can be annotated usingkeywords or free-form text, and then sorted on a varietyof dimensions (e.g., time last visited, keyword, location).An early study of bookmark use showed that peoplecreated bookmarks based on the quality and personalinterest of the content, high frequency of current use,and a sense of potential for future use. 1 Furthermore,

Can your organization benet

from social bookmarking tools?

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the number of bookmarks contained in an individualcollection grew steadily and roughly linearly, and the useof folders to categorize bookmarks increased as the sizeof the collection increased. A single level of folders wasreported for collections with fewer than 300 bookmarks,whereas larger collections prompted multitieredhierarchies.

The desire to nd and share information amongsmall groups, teams, and communities of practice has,not surprisingly, led to the development of a number

of shared bookmarking systems. Early systems oftenused automated techniques to support the creationand categorization of collections of Web bookmarks. 2,3,4 These innovative systems met with some success,although they seem to fall consistently short of theirpotential. Their shortcomings include limited privacyprotection, little support for end-user customization, andhigh requirements for active user participation. 5

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SYSTEMSThe recent emergence of shared bookmarkingapplications has prompted a second look at this kind of collaborative software. Introduced in 2003, the del.icio.ussocial bookmark manager was one of the rst of its typeand has enjoyed an early and large base of committedusers. 6 A urry of similar offerings have since beenunveiled, including a recent beta release of Yahoos MyWeb 2.0. 7

These social bookmarking systems share a number of common features. First, they allow individuals to createpersonal collections of bookmarks and easily share theirbookmarks with others. These centrally stored collectionscan be accessed from any Web-connected machine.

A second, and signicant, enhancement in thesesystems is the use of keywords, or tags, that are explicitlyentered by the user for each bookmark. These tags allowthe individual user to organize and display the collectionwith meaningful labels. Furthermore, multiple tagsallow bookmarks to belong to more than one category,a limitation of the traditional hierarchically organizedfolders found in most Web browsers.

The nal distinguishing characteristic of these socialbookmark applications is the social nature of their use.There is a bias toward increased transparency in thesetools. Although bookmark collections are personally

created and maintained, they are typically visible toothers. A number of user interface elements allow socialbrowsing of the bookmark space. For example, usernames are clickable links; clicking on a name revealsthe bookmark collection for that user. This allowssomeone to get a sense of the topics of interest for aparticular user. Similarly, tags are also clickable, and whenselected will result in a list of all bookmarks that sharethat tag. This is a useful way to browse through the entirebookmark collection to see if it includes information

sources of interest. The ability to reorient the view byclicking on tags or user names, called pivot browsing ,provides a lightweight mechanism to navigate theaggregated bookmark collection.

ENTERPRISE-WIDE SOCIAL BOOKMARKINGThe apparent success of Internet-based socialbookmarking applications begs the question of whetherlarge enterprises or organizations would also benet fromsocial bookmarking systems. To investigate this question,at IBM we are designing and developing an enterprise-scale social bookmarking system called dogear. The restof this article describes the design challenges and earlylessons learned from a friendly trial of the technology. IDENTITY AND TRANSPARENCYThe rst signicant design decision was whether tobase user identity in the application on real names orpseudonyms. We decided to require real-world identityfor the following reasons. First, one of the expectedbenets of the system is to allow users to make inferencesabout the interests and expertise of others based oninformal browsing of bookmark collections. Thisdiscovery of people with shared (or complementary)interests would help to nurture the communities of practice within the enterprise and potentially allowsearching and nding experts on specic topics to helpsolve business problems. Real-name identity would allowusers to look up additional information about other usersin various corporate databases (e.g., corporate onlinedirectory and enterprise Web). In addition, real-nameidentity would facilitate communication among users of the application since the various corporate collaborationtools (e.g., corporate directories, e-mail, chat,) all usereal-name identities. There is also a strong cultural norm

social bookmarkingin the EnterpriseSocial Computing F

O C U S

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n designing dogear, we have considered both the Web siteuser and the technically sophisticated user who wishes toexploit dogear with computer programs. The needs of bothcan be addressed simultaneously by adhering as closely as ispractical to the architectural style that Roy Fielding dubbedREST (representational state transfer). 1 For the user, the RESTstyle is characterized by transparent, meaningful URLs. Inturn, the URL structure suggests an implementation that hasproven to be exible, maintainable, and responsive. Our abil-

ity to play nicely with other research and production systemson the intranet has led to early adoption by a number of people and organizations within IBM.

DOGEAR: AN EXAMPLE OF RESTREST species that a given resource be represented by astable URI (uniform resource identier), such that the sameURI willmean the same thing over time. This implies that thecurrent state of an application must depend entirely on theURI, and not on opaque, hidden conditions such as cookies.The dogear application state consists of a set of constraintson which bookmarks are currently visible, an output format,a current page number, and the number of links per page.

OUTPUT FORMATThe rst element of a dogear URL path selects the desiredoutput format. Currently implemented formats include:* /htmlthe Web site itself * /rssRSS 2.0 2 * /atomAtom 1.0 3 * jsa JavaScript snippet, which, when evaluated, causesHTML to be emitted on the including page* /xbelthe XML Bookmark Exchange Language 4

Each of the machine-readable formats is extended, via XMLnamespaces, to include dogear-specic meta-data.

Programmatic read/write access to ones own book-marks is provided by an HTTP API, which resides at / api.Bookmarks are created and modied via HTTP POST usingsimple name=value query parameters to provide bookmarktitle , URL, and tags . Bookmarks may be deleted by calling/api?url=url with HTTP DELETE.

QUERY CONSTRAINTSThe results may be constrained through the use of HTTP GETquery parameters. Any combination of a person, a tag con-straint, and a text search may be specied. The person con-straint takes the form of user = userid and restricts the resultset to those bookmarks created by the specied person.There are three tag constraints: tag , any , and all . The querytag = foo restricts results to those bookmarks tagged with foo ;any=foo+bar+baz will accept bookmarks bearing any of thefoo , bar , or baz tags; all=foo+bar+baz permits only thosebookmarks bearing all three of the specied tags. Bookmarksare returned in reverse chronological order, except in thepresence of a searchText parameter, which causes results

to be ordered by resultrelevance. In the absenceof any constraints, the 10most recent bookmarks arereturned.

OTHER STATE All queries may includeeither or both of the page and ps parameters, which

specify the results page andpage size, respectively.

REFERENCES1. Fielding, R. T. 2000. Architectural styles and the design

of network-based software architectures. Doctoraldissertation, University of California, Irvine.

2. RSS 2.0 specication; http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss.3. Atom Syndication Format; http://atompub.

org/2005/07/11/draft-ietf-atompub-format-10.html.4. XML Bookmark Exchange Language; http://pyxml.

sourceforge.net/topics/xbel/.

Extensibility by Design in Dogear

How Dogear Encodes Application State in URLs

outputformat constraints

otherstate

http://dogear.webahead.ibm.com /html [email protected] &page=2

http://dogear.webahead.ibm.com /rss ?tag=java &[email protected]

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within the organization to use more formal names withincorporate applications.

Note that although creating personal bookmarkcollections requires authentication of real-nameidentity, it is possible to browse the enterprise bookmarkcollection anonymously. This invisible participationis a form of lurking and allows the benets of thebookmark sharing to extend to the entire enterprise.Lurking behavior is counted in application statistics (e.g.,the number of times a bookmark is clicked to access a

particular information resource). While lurking in onlineenvironments has been characterized as a free ride, it hasbeen shown to provide an important supportive role inthe sociability of online environments. 8

Another important design decision was the degree of transparency to support within the application. Althoughearly public Internet social bookmark applications(e.g., del.icio.us) provided open access to everyonesbookmarks, there are valid reasons to limit access to somesets of bookmarks. For example, a group may want tocreate a collection of information sources in support of a project that may be extremely condential or boundby contract to restricted access. Teams may want to formshared bookmarks that are visible only to the group.

We could also see a need for role- or job-basedcollections of information sources. For example,managers might benet from bookmarking and sharingcertain information sources, while the sales force wouldbenet from another.

Finally, we see a need for private bookmarks. Aninformal survey of potential users of the system indicatedthat many people had bookmarks that they consideredpersonal and would not want to make public. We didnot want to force people to use two bookmarkingtools: one for personal bookmarking (e.g., in a browser)and a corporate tool for shared sources. Our initialimplementation includes both private and enterprise(public) bookmarks. We have architected solutions toboth team- and role-based collections of bookmarks andwill roll out these capabilities in the future.

The decisions to use real-name identity and to supportprivate bookmarks were made with some trepidation.The success of social software applications, in general,requires participation to reach critical mass to providevalue to users and to ensure a sustainable level of

contribution and vibrant interaction. Real-name identitymay discourage some people from using the system, andprivate bookmarks will signicantly reduce the benets of information sharing among users. For a large enterprise,however, we believe that the ability to reach critical masswill not present a problem.

ALERTING AND DISCOVERYTo encourage ongoing use of a social bookmarkingapplication, users need to be alerted to relevant new

information. Indeed, various notication mechanismshave been shown to contribute signicantly to sustainingonline interaction in other collaboration applications. 9 We envision several ways to keep users informed of signicant new content.

Like the del.icio.us social bookmarks manager, dogearprovides an RSS feed on every page. This allows usersto subscribe to collections within general bookmarkcollections, such as the most frequent or most recentbookmarks. In addition, users may subscribe to abookmark collection belonging to a particular individual,or to a particular tag or keyword (e.g., eclipse). Usersmay then run a standard RSS reader to monitor newinformation in a particular collection of bookmarks.

Dogear also exploits collaborative ltering techniques


O C U S

FIG 1

Dogear Prototype

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to screen new bookmarks for those that are predictablyof interest to an individual (or a group of individuals).Common interests can be inferred based on a number

of observable user actions, including use of similar tagsand/or tag combinations, similarity of bookmark (URL)collections, common RSS subscriptions, and click streamsthat indicate interest in specic kinds of bookmarks. Textanalysis of bookmark titles, descriptions, and commentswill also be used to determine bookmark relatedness.E-mail notication, system tray status indicators, or smallpop-up windows can alert users to new information.

DESIGNING FOR EXTENSIBILITY: ENTERPRISE REMIXINGThe design of our system encourages integrationremixingby exposing its data via a simple and intuitive

URL structure and by giving potential exploiters anumber of easily parsed data formats from which tochoose. For a more detailed description of this approach,see the sidebar, Extensibility by Design in Dogear.These URLs are constructed, and their output parsed andtransformed, easily enough to permit rapid creation anddeployment of useful services that retrieve, aggregate, andrepresent our data with a minimum of programming.

EXPLOITING THE LINKSOne of the primary benets of an enterprise socialbookmarking application is that it is an explicit

assessment of the utility or value of various Internetand intranet information resources. As an informationresource, there are many potential integration points

with other corporate applications. Several of these arediscussed here.The rst natural integration point would be to use

the social bookmark link structure to augment enterprisesearch applications. Web resources with high bookmarkcounts are likely to be relevant and useful. Indicesof role- or team-based bookmark collections can bespecially weighted in role- and team-based search tools.An early variant of this search integration has alreadybeen developed as a Firefox plug-in. Intranet searches areaugmented with a supplemental search of the bookmarkcollection, and bookmark matches are presented, as a

group, in the search results list.A second integration would be to combine an

individuals bookmarks with other information sourcesprovided by that individual. A research prototype of an enhanced corporate directory service has alreadyembedded portions of an individuals bookmarkcollection in directory information. The idea is thatan individuals bookmark collection is a meaningfulreection of the topics of general interest to thatindividual. This may be a powerful mechanism to providedynamic updates to the current interests proles forindividuals. In a similar manner, corporate bloggers have

embedded recent personalbookmark collections intheir home blog pages.

A third naturalintegration point wouldbe to place bookmarkcollections from a group of individuals into Web sitesmaintained for variousteams or projects. Wehave already observed oneteam, which is focusedon e-learning, embed acollection of bookmarkson a team Web site. Again,using the subscriptionservices supported by thebookmarking applicationallows automaticupdating of bookmarks,promoting timely sharingof important informationamong team members.

Early Use of Dogear

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CASE STUDY: DOGEARSOCIAL BOOKMARKING SERVICEWe have developed a research prototype to investigate theusefulness of a social bookmarking application for a largeenterprise. Figure 1 shows an individuals page in dogear,featuring the bookmarks the individual has most recentlyadded. The tabs at the top of the left-hand column (A)link to the users tags , a list of people who have book-marked the same URLs, and a list of the individuals ownsubscriptions. The Active Tags (B) area shows an indexed

tag cloud with a slider that can reduce the number of tagsshown based on the ones that are used more frequently.

A list of bookmarks runs down the center of thescreen (C). Each bookmark includes a title, optionaldescriptive text, tags, when the bookmark was made,and information about the author. Clicking on the titletakes you to the bookmarked site. Clicking on a tag takesyou to a list of the other bookmarks that the author hastagged with the same keyword. Clicking on the authorsname takes you to a list of the authors bookmarks.You can copy any bookmark and leave a blog-likecomment when you clickon Comments. Dogearsrobust search lets you ndbookmarks by tag (D). Anydogear page can be viewedas an RSS or Atom feedand can be embedded as ablogroll via the JavaScriptsnippet on any other Webpage (E).

EARLY RESULTSThe dogear prototype hasbeen in a friendly eldtrial within the corporateintranet, and severalmodest announcementsabout the serviceavailability have beenmade. We have begun toassess the usage patternsof the early adopters of thedogear application basedon log les, and a more

formal user survey and interviews will be completed soon.Figure 2 shows some results from the four weeks of earlyuse. An expected dip in use occurs on weekends, but thegeneral pattern shows a sustained number of bookmarkadditions (CREATES) with a slight increase in use overtime. Also visible is evidence that people are followingthe bookmarks to the information source (shown asCLICKS in the gure). During this usage period, morethan 300 people were recorded using the application,with 42 percent creating bookmarks and 57 percent

clicking though to the Web page. We see very littlebookmark editing, which would be evidence of bookmarkmanagement activities such as renement of tags orkeywords, or additional annotations to the bookmark.This is not surprising as we are early in the trial; othershave shown that bookmark management increases as thesize of a collection increases. 10

We have also begun to look for patterns of sharedinterest in various information sources. We have usedsocial network analytical methods to begin to understandthe information afnities among dogear users. 11 Figure 3


O C U S

Sociogram of Dogear Use Relationships

provider

seeker

person

indicates use of bookmarkpoints to bookmark author

FIG 3

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is a sociogram showing which individuals have clickedthrough to another persons bookmark reference. Clustersof individuals are already visible, as are those individuals

who are most likely to be looking for information(seekers) and those who are information providers. Wehave begun to consider the ways we can use this kind of data in helping to share information among larger groupsof people within the organization.

SHOWING GREAT POTENTIAL Although we have just begun to get feedback on thedogear social bookmarking service, it shows greatpotential. A signicant group of very active early usershave already begun to generate excitement aboutthe application through informal communication

mechanisms. Indeed, there are already more than 100mentions of the dogear application in the enterpriseblogs. We have already seen a handful of dogearextensions by other members of the organization, whichwill only serve to increase the benets of the application.We are excited by the potential for using the dogearapplication to improve information sharing, expertiselocation, and support of communities of interest withinthe enterprise.

Work is already under way to enhance the dogearsocial bookmarking service in several ways. As thenumber of shared bookmarks grows, so will the challengeto help users nd new and particularly relevant content.We have begun to explore various search enhancements,as well as novel forms of customizable alerting. We havealso begun to explore ways to provide better support forteams and communities of practice. These smaller groupsmay help us to understand what factors are important toscale down the dogear service for small and medium-sizebusinesses. Q

REFERENCES1. Abrams, D., Baecker, R., and Chignell, M. 1998.

Information archiving with bookmarks: Personal Webspace construction and organization. CHI, Los Angeles:41-48.

2. Marais, H., and Bharat, K. 1997. Supporting cooperativeand personal surng with a desktop assistant.

Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology , Banff, Alberta, Canada(October 14-17): 129-138. New York, NY: ACM Press.

3. Wittenburg, K., Das, D., Hill, W. C., and Stead, L. 1995.Group asynchronous browsing on the World WideWeb. Proceedings of the Fourth International World WideWeb Conference, Boston, MA.

4. Keller, R. M., Wolfe, S. R., Chen, J. R., Rabinowitz, J.L., and Mathe, N. 1997. A bookmarking service fororganizing and sharing URLs. Computer Networks and

ISDN Systems 29 (September): 1103-1114.5. Kanawati, R., and Malek, M. 2002. A multi-agentsystem for collaborative bookmarking. AAMAS ,Bologna, Italy: 1137-1138.

6. Del.icio.us; http://del.icio.us/.7. My Web 2.0 beta; http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/.8. Nonnecke, B., and Preece, J. 2000. Lurker

demographics: Counting the silent. Proceedings of theSIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (The Hague, The Netherlands, April 1-6): 73-80. New York, NY: ACM Press.

9. Millen, D., and Patterson, J. 2002. Stimulating social

engagement in a community network. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported CooperativeWork. New Orleans, LA (November 18-20).

10. See reference 1.11. Wasserman, S., and Faust, K. 1994. Social Network

Analysis: Methods and Applications . New York andCambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

LOVE IT, HATE IT? LET US KNOW

[email protected] or www.acmqueue.com/forums

DAVID MILLEN is a research manager in the Collabora-tive User Experience group at IBM Research in Cambridge,MA. Through eld studies and development of new socialsoftware applications, his group studies the social and tech-nological implications of online communities and large-scalecollaboration. Millen holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology

from Rutgers University and has held research and develop-ment positions at AT&T Research/Bell Laboratories.

JONATHAN FEINBERG is an advisory engineer in the Col-laborative User Experience group at IBM Research, which hejoined in September 2003. He considers himself a general-ist, with particular interest in glue programmingtying

together disparate and otherwise mutually agnostic systems.He holds a B.A. in English and American literature fromBrown University.BERNARD KERR is a senior design researcher in the Collab-orative User Experience group at IBM Research. His currentresearch focuses on designing and building advanced con-cept software applications and visualizations for collabora-tion. Kerr graduated with a M.A. in computer-related design

from the Royal College of Art in London, UK. Prior to comingto IBM he held research and design positions at IntervalResearch Corporation and IDEO Product Development. 2005 ACM 1542-7730/05/1100 $5.00

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