Social information access: The other side of the social web

Abstract

Modern Web, which is frequently called Social Web or Web 2.0, celebrates the power of the user community. Most frequently it is associated with the power of users as contributors or various kinds of contents through Wikis, blogs, and resource sharing sites. However, the community power impacts not only the production of Web content, but also the access to all kinds of Web content. A number of research groups worldwide work on social information access techniques, which help users get to the right information using "community wisdom" distilled from tracked actions of those who worked with this information earlier. The paper provides an overview of this research stream focusing on social search, social navigation, and social visualization techniques. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.