Implicit Social Network Construction and Expert User Determination in Web Portals

Social Information Processing

Volume

Social Information Processing

Contents

Especially within the context of the ongoing Web 2.0 hype, social software has recently gained more and more momentum. Social software is software that focuses on the interaction and collaboration between users being part of social networks. So far, most of these networks are constructed explicitly by users themselves. On the other hand Web Portals give users a central point of access to relevant information. They provide users with a highly collaborative environment, but, until now, required the users that interact and collaborate to know each other. As part of this work we present a system additionally able to construct social networks implicitly by observing users behavior in Web Portals. We aim to use the derived social networks to enhance interaction and collaboration within the community.