SOCWEB · Searching the Social Web

From its beginnings as a means to share scientific data, the Web is evolving to capture parts of daily life for millions of users. A large amount of user-generated content on a number of topics, people and their connections to other people and content are placed on-line daily. Within this new ecosystem there are two important new trends that bring a paradigm shift to how information is searched and accessed on the Web. First, users are increasingly using the Web to accomplish complex information searching tasks that may involve other users: e.g. the purchase of a house, or planning a vacation. When working towards such tasks, users oftentimes have the (currently unmet) need to coordinate, collaborate, and consult with other users. The second trend is the growing use and availability of social media data. Such data, is often structured and contains information such as reviews, rankings, trust scores, etc. which can be linked together into some form of Social Network (SN), based on friendship-links and user interactions. Such data can be particularly useful for tailoring the search results to the interests of a given user and for identifying users that are knowledgeable and potentially helpful around a given topic. We propose to investigate how Social Networks can improve the daily life of users while searching and accessing information on the Web. We will organize our research around the following thrusts. a) SN Data Management: How can we efficiently manage the constantly evolving social Web data? b) Social Searches: How can we enable users to save and share their Web searches with other users? c) Socially-Aware Results: How should we take into account a user's Social Network during Web searches? d) Social Trust: How can we tell which user is trustworthy and knowledgeable on a given topic? As part of our proposal we will build a Web application showcasing our findings.