Business from technology

Social semantic media applications

Competence

Social media has changed the way people communicate and co-operate. This development started in the consumer sector, but it is changing the ways media is created and consumed, how companies communicate with their customers and how work and work related communication are carried out.

We know the social media technologies and processes and are able to develop new application and service concepts as well as build prototypes of them. We also know how to involve users in the research and development process. We develop new concepts for the media sector and also for other areas where there is a need for new ways of communication and co-creation. We have also studied the social media business models and open innovation. 

We know semantic web technologies, such as RDF and SPARQL, ontologies like SKOS, FOAF, and SIOC, and have worked with semantic knowledge bases like KOKO and Geonames. By utilising these tools, we are able to add intelligence to applications. Semantic features give opportunities for enhancing the user experience with more intelligence features. Semantics can also be used in analysing the available content and turn it into a more usable format. 

Challenges

• utilising social media to offer a great user experience and to connect with the existing applications and every day use patterns
  
• monetising media and user activity in new services
  
• connecting users into the innovation process and practising open innovation
  
• utilising and analysing socially created content and metadata
  
• utilising semantic web technologies and ontologies.
  

Solutions

We at VTT are in a position to offer and combine the various kinds of expertise that is needed in creating new social semantic applications.

• Tilkut – a social semantic application for gathering and sharing knowledge, observations and ideas with semantic support
  
• Owela – a web laboratory for user studies and co-design projects, which can be completely open, semi-open or confidential
  
• analyser for user created metadata such as tags for enhancing knowledge of users and media resources
  
• Social media ontology (OSMO) for combining and analysing information of social media usage and users
  
• frameworks for analysing and developing social media applications and their business models
  

Benefits

• More rapid development of new media services throughout the innovation process, from opportunity identification to prototype development, with our knowledge of traditional and social media processes and user-driven innovation tools.
  
• Adding intelligence to media and socially created content adds value both to the service provider and service users.
  
• Tapping into users’ and customers’ knowledge and experience with the help of our co-design process and tools.