User Profile Modelling in Online Communities

Abstract

With the rise of social networking sites user information is becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated. The needs, behaviours and preferences of users are dynamically changing, depending on their background knowledge, their current task, and many other parameters. Existing ontology models capture demographic information as well as the users’ activities and interactions in online communities. These vocabularies represent the raw data, but actionable knowledge comes from filtering these data, selecting useful features, and mining the resulting information to uncover the most salient preferences, behaviours and needs of the users. In this paper we propose reusing and reengineering ontological resources to provide a broader representation of users and the dynamics that emerge from the virtual social environments in which they participate.