Ontologies.

Ontologies.

Originally shared by Productive Computer Systems

Google Spaces & Ontologies

I won't claim to know everything there's to know about ontologies, but that's what tomorrow's hangout on #SEOHelp  is all about and David Amerland himself will explain and expand on the concept.

But what I do know is that ontologies are suppose to simplify complex concepts and that's where I think we can find some similarities between Google Communities and Google Spaces.

Communities allow you to invite as many people as you wish, sub-divide content into Categories and then share posts with either text and/or photos and/or videos. You can be notified whenever someone posts to a Community (not a specific Category, but anywhere in the Community) and you can comment on any posts.

Spaces is similar, you can also invite the people you wish (including anyone), you can post content comprised of text, photos and videos and people can reply on the posts. But Spaces are quite a bit different in a number of ways.

1. Spaces are much easier and faster to set up and use
2. Anyone can use Spaces with a simple link (not so with Communities)
3. The entries with content can include not only text and photo or text and video, but can include any number of text entries, AND photos, AND videos
4. Feedback (replies) to the entries in Spaces can be submitted as text, as well as photos and videos, as many as desired (Communities can only have text comments)
5. Notifications can be limited to a specific Space and segregation of content in Spaces can be done via color, texture, as well as by simply setting up more Spaces (Communities don't have anything beyond two dozen categories)
6. Posting content, especially from mobile, is far faster and easier using Spaces, by utilizing the Chrome Extension, the mobile app, with mobile sharing available directly to Spaces

With all of the above considered - why would anyone ever use Communities, right? There are definitely uses for those as well.

Here are some limitations of Spaces to consider that Communities don't have:

1. You can't rearrange entries, they're shown automatically in reverse chronological order (latest at the top). There's no pin option, like there is in Communities.
2. You can't edit your replies and text entries in Spaces. If you've made a mistake - you have to delete the entire item and redo it. You can certainly easily edit post text in Community posts.
3. You can't delete replies in Spaces, without deleting the entire entry (think of entries as posts). You can delete such in Communities.
4. You can't remove existing users in Spaces, certainly can in Communities.

As you can see - both have their benefits and drawbacks and both should be considered for use, since both are very potent in what they do.

HOA event pages allow some user feedback, but only via text. No photos and no videos are allowed. That's way too limiting in today's rich media world. So, I decided to augment that.

As I mentioned yesterday, from now on, every HOA I create or host will have a Google Space associated with it, so the participants can easily engage with text, photos and videos.

Tomorrow David Amerland and I will discuss Ontologies, as part of his ongoing video series from his best-selling book SEO Help. We set up a Community for the book when we started these series and both members and David have posted some very relevant and useful content there. And even though each chapter of the book was initially given its own category - Communities don't provide enough categories to meet our needs and thus we had to lump some together, kind of making the segregation by chapter somewhat useless. Also, the notifications, as described above, wasn't the best, since if anyone just wanted to participate in discussion on Hash Tags, for example, and there was a new entry in Ontologies - they'd still get notified (if they had notifications turned on) or (if they didn't have them on) - they'd never know if someone posted something on the topic in the book that they're interested in.

Now with using Google Spaces - we eliminate both of these issues by having a Space dedicated to a chapter. We don't have the prior chapters set up yet, but will start with the current one - Chapter 9 - Ontologies with its own Google Space.

You can get to it by clicking below (or here https://goo.gl/spaces/QnfXuAQJwudSog8h6). You can join that Space, add content to it, share the link with others who might have use for this info. And when I say 'add content' - I mean add entries, add text, add photos, add videos, add gif animations, built-in stamps and even emojis (via mobile). You can access and participate on your desktop and on mobile devices and thus you can truly focus on just the things that you care about and participate as fully as you'd like. You'll be notified ONLY when there's activity in Ontologies, don't need to worry about being bugged on other topics that you're not interested in. Very specific focus here on just what you need and want to be notified about.

You can even turn on Push notifications and have your desktop flash a pop-up that someone updated the Space.

The Activities display in Google Spaces will give you a full detail of who posted what, where and when (no such details in Communities, btw).

P.S. A word of caution. As you can see - I'm pretty excited about what Google Spaces can do and how the brilliant minds of Google put it together so far. I think it's a brilliant 'little' brother to Communities that can hold its own. But the lack of user management, posts moderation and replies ordering/changing/deleting can create a place of chaos and non-sense... since 'people are people'. So, please exercise some self-restraint. If you feel like bashing someone's head in - please fly to their location and do so in person, don't do it here on Google Spaces, since it won't actually do anything but ruin the experience.

Let's keep this particular Google Space with discussion of anything & everything Ontologies. David Amerland, I'm certain, would participate here and you have a direct line of communication with the author of SEO Help. Doesn't get much better than that, so please be mindful. Any entry (post) that goes off the rails will be deleted and if a reply isn't appropriate - it would prompt deletion of the entire entry as well. In other words - common sense should rule the day. If you want to come here and discuss Ontologies - by all means, come as often as you wish and participate as much as you'd like. Otherwise - this is NOT the Space you're looking for...