WWW 2005 2nd Annual Workshop on Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics

The weblogging microcosm has evolved into a distinct form, into a community of publishers. The strong sense of community amongst bloggers distinguishes weblogs from the various forms of online publications such as online journals, 'zines and newsletters that flourished in the early days of the web and from traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and television. The use of weblogs primarily for publishing, as opposed to discussion, differentiates blogs from other online community forums, such as Usenet newsgroups and message boards. Often referred to as the blogsphere, the network of bloggers is a thriving ecosystem, with its own internally driven dynamics.

The cross-linking that takes place between blogs, through blogrolls, explicit linking, trackbacks, and referrals creates implicit and explicit networks which define the communities of the weblogging world. create a strong sense of community in the weblogging world. There is work underway to understand the dynamics of the weblogging network, much of which springs from bloggers themselves. The self-publishing aspect of weblogs, the time-stamped entries, the highly interlinked nature of the blogging community and the significant impact of weblog content on politics, ideas, and culture make them a fascinating subject of study.

Workshop Topics and Objectives

The objective of this workshop is to provide a forum for sharing research on the blogging ecosystem. The workshop will consist of technical papers, panel discussions, and demonstrations of research prototypes. Topics of interest for technical papers include, but are not limited to the following:

• Mapping and visualization of the blogsphere
  
• Weblog taxonomies: automatic and/or manual construction
  
• Automatic classification of weblog entries
  
• Weblog search engines
  
• Applications built on top of blog data
  
• Aggregate measures over the blogsphere
  
• Dynamics of information flow across the blogsphere
  
• Methods for weblog census
  
• Weblog lifecycle
  
• Influence of blogsphere on the information landscape
  
• Alternative blog forms (podcasting, moblogging, photoblogs, etc.)
  

The papers from last year's workshop are available online.

Paper Submission and Review

Papers should not exceed 5000 words (approximately 12 pages) in length and must be submitted in PDF. Short papers (up to 6 pages) describing early research results are also welcome.

Important Dates

Deadline of electronic submission: March 4 , 2005
Author notification: March 28, 2005
Workshop: May 10, 2005

The conference will be held May 10-14, 2005, in Chiba, Japan.