The benefit of using tag-based profiles

Abstract

Collaborative tagging, i.e. the process of assigning metadata in the form of keywords to shared content by many users, has emerged as an important way to provide information about resources on the Web and elsewhere. Such keywords (tags) are used to enable the organization of information within personal information spaces, such as photo collections, but can also be shared, allowing browsing and searching with the help of tags attached by other users to information resources from the Web. Recent research has shown that such tag distributions stabilize over time and can be used to improve search on the Web. In this paper we are interested in another aspect, namely how they characterize the user and enable personalized recommendations. Using data from a frequently used music search portal, Last.fm, we analyze tag usage and statistics and investigate the use of tag-based user profiles in contrast to conventional user profiles based on song and track usage. We specify recommendation algorithms based on tag user profiles, and explore how collaborative filtering recommendations based on these tag profiles are different from recommendations based on song/track profiles. Finally, we describe a new search-based method, which uses tags to recommend songs interesting to a user, yielding substantially improved results. The paper finishes with a discussion of some future work to further improve tag-based search and recommendation in community web sites. © 2007 IEEE.