Social Matching: A Research Agenda and First Steps
Speaker: Loren Terveen
Location: SICS Although the Internet enables powerful tools for social interactions, many tasksÑfor example, information-seekingÑare undertaken as solitary activities. Information seekers are unaware of the invisible crowd traveling in parallel to their course through the information landscape. A number of systems attempt to make the invisible crowd visible, thus affording opportunistic collaboration. Another class of systems support users who are explicitly seeking other people, e.g., to help solve a particular problem or to establish a social relationship. We refer to both types of systems as "social matching" systems. In this talk, I will outline a preliminary analytic framework for social matching systems, compare and contrast them to traditional recommender systems, and identify a set of research challenges. I also will describe several experiments my colleagues and I have begun to investigate the conditions under which people want system support for opportunistic collaboration. An initial study found that demographic similarity between partners in an online game-playing task affected how the partners interacted with each other, while similarities or differences in task-relevant skills did not. I will discuss possible interpretations of these findings and the future steps they suggest in the broader social matching research agenda. You are all most welcome! No preregistration is necessary, but it is nice if you send me an email so that I can book the appropriate size of room for his seminar. Loren Terveen is visiting because he will be the opponent of Tomas Olsson's licentiate thesis. Tomas will defend his thesis in Uppsala on teh 5th of June 10.15 - 12. You are most welcome to this event as well! http://www.it.uu.se/research/reports/lic/2003-006/ |