Multi agent system for historical information retrieval from online social networks

Abstract

Nowadays, we witness a flood of continuously changing information from a variety of web sources. The desire to track the information changes in real time requires new methods in web information retrieval. This paper explores the process of retrieving information from Online Social Networks (OSNs) using Multi Agent System (MAS) technology. The novelty of this study consists in leaving an agent in each user profile to monitor its updates which are sent to a controller agent that saves a history of each user's activity in a local repository. An algorithm making use of MAS within the Online Social Network Retrieval System (OSNRS) is proposed. Our experimental work shows that using MAS simplifies the process of tracking profile's history and opens the opportunity of understanding the dynamic behavior of OSN users especially when it is combined with text mining. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.