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Generalizing the "Like" button: Empowering websites with monitoring capabilities
Abstract
Increasingly, a user's action in a website might have an impact in other websites. The Like and ShareThis buttons are forerunners of this tendency whereby websites strive to influence and be influenced by the actions of their users in the websphere. The term Web Radar is coined to denote software that serves to impact a website (the host) from what is happening somewhere else in the websphere (i.e. the target). Current approaches provided limited expressivity in either the reactions (e.g. the Like button is limited to write entries on the user's wall in Facebook), or the range of participating sites (pre-set in the Radar platform, e.g. Ifttt). We believe supporting Radars as configurable services might account for more domain-specific Radars, i.e. Radars where the monitoring sites, the tracking conditions and the reactions are not fixed by the Radar platform but rather determined by the Radar host. This vision is confronted with three main challenges: API heterogeneity, scalability and technical complexities. We address these matters in RadarThis, a service that permits webmasters to set Web Radars for their websites. We capitalize on YQL to hide API complexity, and use trigger-like syntax to specify custom radar strategies. A case study is presented using the website Instapaper as the Radar host.
... Previous work on End-User Development (EUD) [48] [54] has demonstrated that, if appropriate tools are provided, end users might be able to create what they need (or at least define more precisely part of what they need). DENIM is a pioneer example that illustrates how tools can be used for involving users into the design of the Web sites to be developed [58]. ...
This chapter presents Web Augmentation (WA) technologies as tools and techniques for end-user development. WA technologies differ from other web development technologies as they target at improving existing Web pages and not at creating new Web sites. These improvements can deeply alter the way users use and interact with Web sites. This chapter revisits the concept of WA and provides an overview of the main features that characterize WA technologies. This characterization is used to position and compare the various contributions that have been made in WA. To make things more concrete we provide an illustration of WA technology through a case study using a dedicated tool called WebMakeup. Despite all their advantages, WA technologies present some limitations that might result in challenges on the user side. These aspects are also presented and discussed, highlighting directions for future work in that domain.
... As we know, most existing clouds do support SLA-based services [8], [16], [22], [23], [30]. However, the solution of cloud resource management has not been addressed very well in existing literature [13], [27], [33]. It is not easy to solve a resource management problem when we consider all these constraints: trustworthiness, an end-to-end response time, and service availability. ...
... In this paper, we perform a student peer evaluation using groupware based on voting with a "Like" button in a course practice. Students can vote on the others' reports by pressing a "Like" button, when they think the report is good [3]. It can reduce the students' burden of evaluating others' reports without specific points. ...
Nowadays, many universities utilize groupware support for students to post and share their e-reports, and the students can browse and vote other students' reports in e-learning. Teachers then need to evaluate all students' reports, but this will require a great deal of time and effort for a fair evaluation of the reports. Therefore, we propose an e-report scoring method based on student peer evaluation by considering the relationship between voting and posting time of the e-reports, to promote the quality of the votes and prevent unfair votes. Then, the method can provide scores of reports based on a voting graph by analyzing students who vote the reports. In this paper, we perform a student peer evaluation using groupware based on voting with a "Like" button in a course practice, and compare the results with teachers' evaluation.
... Once Web pages are loaded on the Web browser, these augmenters can not only change the way information is delivered to the users but they can also modify the way users can interact with Web sites; for example by adding a button with a shortcut to Skype every time a phone number is detected on a Web page [10]. The potential of Web augmentation techniques for adapting existing Web sites according to a variety of users' need is huge and this can be easily illustrated by some advanced applications such as lightweight integration of information extracted from the Web [19], generalization of social features allowing user to vote and share information with other users whilst browsing Web sites [12], and support to context-sensitive navigation across diverse Web site [13] and refactoring Web sites for accessibility [18]. It is interesting to notice in all these examples that Web augmentation techniques are used to adapt contents and functionalities according to users' needs that have not been originally take into account during the design of the Web site. ...
The use of Web augmentation techniques has an impact on tasks of owners of Web sites, developers of scripts and end-users. Because the Web sites can be modified by external scripts, their owners might lose control about how Web site contents are delivered. To prevent this, they might be tempted to modify the structure of Web pages thus making harder to execute external scripts. However, communities of Web augmentation scripters are increasing since end-users still have needs not yet covered by Web sites. In this paper we analyze the trade-offs of the introduction of Web augmentation scripts. In order to mitigate some negative effects, such as the loss of control, we propose an approach based on negotiation and coordination between actors involved in the process. We present a set of tools to facilitate the integration of scripts and to foster their dissemination for the benefit of all actors involved.
Given the proliferation of online review websites—e.g., Yelp.com—that prominently display a large number of online custome0r reviews, scholars have made efforts to investigate what makes a review “useful.” However, there is little research that offers insight into how review content, reviewer characteristics, and review contexts jointly influence review usefulness. We specially examine the role of review certainty on review usefulness. Drawing on dual-process and social influence theories, we examine the interaction effects of review certainty, reviewer popularity, reviewer expertise, and the niche width of a restaurant on review usefulness. In particular, this study focuses on how review certainty interacts with other contextual factors to influence users’ evaluation of the usefulness of online reviews. Utilizing a zero-inflated negative binomial Poisson regression, we empirically tested our hypotheses based on 10,097 reviews on 2,383 restaurants from Yelp.com. Our results indicated that (1) the impact of review certainty on review usefulness decreases with reviewer popularity but does not vary with reviewer expertise and (2) the niche width of a restaurant—as a contextual feature—interacts with review certainty and reviewer characteristics in influencing review usefulness. Theoretically, these findings contribute to online customer review literature and certainty literature, as well as social media research, provide new guidelines for predicting review usefulness, and add new insights into understanding the role of organizational positioning for customer evaluations. In practice, our findings can help online review platforms better understand how to screen and select useful reviews for visitors.
The system providing the automated monitoring of changes in web resources was designed and developed. The entire process is divided into five parts. Each subsequent stage included some parts of the previous one. The practical value of this system resides in the ability to detect, in the shortest possible time, the changes in web-resource. In case, if unwanted changes were detected, the user will be able to perform the correction without the need for constant monitoring of content by developers. This facilitates the process of restoring the satisfactory state of web site after unauthorized changes were made. It also allows to track the competitors’ web pages in order to timely improve their own products.
One of Web2.0 hallmarks is the empowerment of users in the transit from consumers to producers. So far, the focus has been on content: text, video or pictures on the Web has increasingly a layman’s origin. This paper looks at another Web functionality, cross publishing, whereby items in one website might also impact on sister websites. The Like and ShareThis buttons are forerunners of this tendency whereby websites strive to influence and be influenced by the actions of their users in the websphere (e.g. clicking on Like in site A impacts a different site B, i.e. Facebook). This brings cross publishing into the users’ hands but in a “canned” way, i.e. the ’what’ (i.e. the resource) and the ’whom’ (the addressee website) is set by the hosting website. However, this built-in focus does not preclude the need for a ’do-it-yourself’ approach where users themselves are empowered to define their cross publishing strategies. The goal is to turn cross publishing into a crosscut, i.e. an ubiquitous, website-agnostic, do-it-yourself service. This vision is confronted with two main challenges: website application programming interface (API) heterogeneity and finding appropriate metaphors that shield users from the technical complexities while evoking familiar mental models. This work introduces Trygger, a plugin for Firefox that permits to define cross publishing rules on top of the Yahoo Query Language (YQL) console. We capitalize on YQL to hide API complexity, and envision cross publishing as triggers upon the YQL’s virtual database. Using SQL-like syntax, Trygger permits YQL users to specify custom cross publishing strategies.
In this research study, the authors investigate the association between external searching, which is searching on a web search engine, and internal searching, which is searching on a website. They classify 295,571 external - internal searches where each search is composed of a search engine query that is submitted to a web search engine and then one or more subsequent queries submitted to a commercial website by the same user. The authors examine 891,453 queries from all searches, of which 295,571 were external search queries and 595,882 were internal search queries. They algorithmically classify all queries into states, and then clustered the searching episodes into major searching configurations and identify the most commonly occurring search patterns for both external, internal, and externalto- internal searching episodes. The research implications of this study are that external sessions and internal sessions must be considered as part of a continuous search episode and that online businesses can leverage external search information to more effectively target potential consumers.
In this paper we discuss the collection, semantic annotation and analysis of real-time social signals from micro blogging data. We focus on users interested in analyzing social signals collectively for sense making. Our proposal enables flexibility in selecting subsets for analysis, alleviating information overload. We define an architecture that is based on state-of-the-art Semantic Web technologies and a distributed publish-subscribe protocol for real time communication. In addition, we discuss our method and application in a scenario related to the health care reform in the United States.
, Exception, Clock, Externalg Granularity ae fMember, Subset, Setg Type ae fPrimitive, Composite g Operators ae for, and, seq, closure, times, not g Consumption mode ae fRecent, Chronicle, Cumulative, Continuous g Role 2 fMandatory, Optional, Noneg Condition Role 2 fMandatory, Optional, Noneg Context ae fDB T , BindE , DBE , DBC g Action Options ae fStructure Operation, Behavior Invocation, Update-Rules, Abort Inform, External, Do Instead g Context ae fDB T , BindE , BindC , DBE , DBC , DBA g ---behavior invocation, in which case the event is raised by the execution of some user-defined operation (e.g. the message display is sent to an object of type widget). It is common for event languages to allow events to be raised before or after an operation has been executed. ---transaction, in which case the event is raised by transaction commands (e.g. abort, commit, begin-transaction) ---abstract or user-defined, in which case a programming mechanism is used that allows an appli...
The transition of personal information management (PIM) tools off the desktop to the Web presents an opportunity to augment these tools with capabilities provided by the wealth of real-time information readily available. In this paper, we describe a next-generation personal information assistance engine that lets end-users delegate to it various simple context- and activity-reactive tasks and reminders. Our system, Atomate, treats RSS/ATOM feeds from social networking and life-tracking sites as sensor streams, integrating information from such feeds into a simple unified RDF world model representing people, places and things and their time-varying states and activities. Combined with other information sources on the web, including the user’s online calendar, web-based e-mail client, news feeds and messaging services, Atomate can be made to automatically carry out a variety of simple tasks for the user, ranging from context-aware filtering and messaging, to sharing and social coordination actions. Atomate’s open architecture and world model easily accommodate new information sources and actions via the addition of feeds and web services. To make routine use of the system easy for non-programmers, Atomate provides a constrained-input natural language interface (CNLI) for behavior specification, and a direct-manipulation interface for inspecting and updating its world model.
The transition of personal information management (PIM) tools off the desktop to the Web presents an opportunity to augment these tools with capabilities provided by the wealth of real-time information readily available. In this paper, we describe a next-generation personal information assistance engine that lets end-users delegate to it various simple context- and activity-reactive tasks and reminders. Our system, Atomate, treats RSS/ATOM feeds from social networking and life-tracking sites as sensor streams, integrating information from such feeds into a simple unified RDF world model representing people, places and things and their time-varying states and activities. Combined with other information sources on the web, including the user’s online calendar, web-based e-mail client, news feeds and messaging services, Atomate can be made to automatically carry out a variety of simple tasks for the user, ranging from context-aware filtering and messaging, to sharing and social coordination actions. Atomate’s open architecture and world model easily accommodate new information sources and actions via the addition of feeds and web services. To make routine use of the system easy for non-programmers, Atomate provides a constrained-input natural language interface (CNLI) for behavior specification, and a direct-manipulation interface for inspecting and updating its world model.
This paper explores the values, characteristics, and conditions of interoperability provided by Open Application Programming Interfaces (Open APIs) used by Facebook to identify underlying tensions that may challenge the sustainability of the Web as an open, secure, and liberating communication space. Interoperability between major online social network services holds great potential for linking a broad range of platforms, spaces, and people together in exciting new ways. Open APIs support interoperability by providing the tools to share data used to develop popular and useful Web applications, achieve seamless integration of social media services, and give rise to mutually beneficial third-party developer ecosystems that build on top of social media platforms. Yet, while Open APIs provide new ways of sharing and participating, they also provide a means for companies like Facebook to achieve market dominance, as well as undermine privacy, data security, contextual integrity, user autonomy and freedom. This paper examines interoperability enabled by Open APIs among competing online services (Facebook, Google, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter) to identify the tenuous push and pull of competition and cooperation. The author provides a summary and analysis of Facebook's Open API releases over the last five years, to determine the underlying conditions for sharing and identify the social implications of their technical features. This paper concludes by suggesting ways that users can make more informed decisions about their sharing and perhaps change the underlying conditions of interoperability all together by developing more secure and user controllable social networks, Open APIs, and online applications.
Social tagging is one of the hallmarks of Web2.0. The most common role of tags is descriptive. However, tags are being used for other purposes such as to indicate some actions to be conducted on the resource (e.g. 'toread'). This work focuses on 'prescriptive tags' that have associated some implicit behaviour in the user's mind. So far, little support is given for the automation of this "implicit behaviour", more to the point, if this behaviour is outside the tagging site. This paper introduces the notion of 'reactive tags' as a means for tagging to impact sites other than the tagging site itself. The operational semantics of reactive tags is defined through event-condition-action rules. Events are the action of tagging. Conditions check for additional data. Finally, rule's actions might impact someone else's account in a different website. The specification of this behaviour semantics is hidden through a graphical interface that permits users with no programming background to easily associate 'reactions' to the act of tagging. A working system, TABASCO, is presented as proof of concept.
This paper was the first initiative to try to define Web2.0 and understand its implications for the next generation of software, looking at both design patterns and business modes. Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.
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