The information contained in social tagging systems is often modelled as a graph of connections between users, items and tags. Recommendation algorithms such as FolkRank, have the potential to leverage complex relationships in the data, corresponding to multiple hops in the graph. We present an in-depth analysis and evaluation of graph models for social tagging data and propose novel adaptations and extensions of FolkRank to improve tag recommendations. We highlight implicit assumptions made by the widely used folksonomy model, and propose an alternative and more accurate graph-representation of the data. Our extensions of FolkRank address the new item problem by incorporating content data into the algorithm, and significantly improve prediction results on unpruned datasets. Our adaptations address issues in the iterative weight spreading calculation that potentially hinder FolkRank's ability to leverage the deep graph as an information source. Moreover, we evaluate the benefit of considering each deeper level of the graph, and present important insights regarding the characteristics of social tagging data in general. Our results suggest that the base assumption made by conventional weight propagation methods, that closeness in the graph always implies a positive relationship, does not hold for the social tagging domain.

The information contained in social tagging systems is often modelled as a graph of connections between users, items and tags. Recommendation algorithms such as FolkRank, have the potential to leverage complex relationships in the data, corresponding to multiple hops in the graph. We present an in-depth analysis and evaluation of graph models for social tagging data and propose novel adaptations and extensions of FolkRank to improve tag recommendations. We highlight implicit assumptions made by the widely used folksonomy model, and propose an alternative and more accurate graph-representation of the data. Our extensions of FolkRank address the new item problem by incorporating content data into the algorithm, and significantly improve prediction results on unpruned datasets. Our adaptations address issues in the iterative weight spreading calculation that potentially hinder FolkRank's ability to leverage the deep graph as an information source. Moreover, we evaluate the benefit of considering each deeper level of the graph, and present important insights regarding the characteristics of social tagging data in general. Our results suggest that the base assumption made by conventional weight propagation methods, that closeness in the graph always implies a positive relationship, does not hold for the social tagging domain.

The information contained in social tagging systems is often modelled as a graph of connections between users, items and tags. Recommendation algorithms such as FolkRank, have the potential to leverage complex relationships in the data, corresponding to multiple hops in the graph. We present an in-depth analysis and evaluation of graph models for social tagging data and propose novel adaptations and extensions of FolkRank to improve tag recommendations. We highlight implicit assumptions made by the widely used folksonomy model, and propose an alternative and more accurate graph-representation of the data. Our extensions of FolkRank address the new item problem by incorporating content data into the algorithm, and significantly improve prediction results on unpruned datasets. Our adaptations address issues in the iterative weight spreading calculation that potentially hinder FolkRank's ability to leverage the deep graph as an information source. Moreover, we evaluate the benefit of considering each deeper level of the graph, and present important insights regarding the characteristics of social tagging data in general. Our results suggest that the base assumption made by conventional weight propagation methods, that closeness in the graph always implies a positive relationship, does not hold for the social tagging domain.

Real-world tagging datasets have a large proportion of new/ untagged documents. Few approaches for recommending tags to a user for a document address this new item problem, concentrating instead on artificially created post-core datasets where it is guaranteed that the user as well as the document of each test post is known to the system and already has some tags assigned to it. In order to recommend tags for new documents, approaches are required which model documents not only based on the tags assigned to them in the past (if any), but also the content. In this paper we present a novel adaptation to the widely recognised FolkRank tag recommendation algorithm by including content data. We adapt the FolkRank graph to use word nodes instead of document nodes, enabling it to recommend tags for new documents based on their textual content. Our adaptations make FolkRank applicable to post-core 1 ie. the full real-world tagging datasets and address the new item problem in tag recommendation. For comparison, we also apply and evaluate the same methodology of including content on a simpler tag recommendation algorithm. This results in a less expensive recommender which suggests a combination of user related and document content related tags.</p> <p>Including content data into FolkRank shows an improvement over plain FolkRank on full tagging datasets. However, we also observe that our simpler content-aware tag recommender outperforms FolkRank with content data. Our results suggest that an optimisation of the weighting method of FolkRank is required to achieve better results.

Real-world tagging datasets have a large proportion of new/ untagged documents. Few approaches for recommending tags to a user for a document address this new item problem, concentrating instead on artificially created post-core datasets where it is guaranteed that the user as well as the document of each test post is known to the system and already has some tags assigned to it. In order to recommend tags for new documents, approaches are required which model documents not only based on the tags assigned to them in the past (if any), but also the content. In this paper we present a novel adaptation to the widely recognised FolkRank tag recommendation algorithm by including content data. We adapt the FolkRank graph to use word nodes instead of document nodes, enabling it to recommend tags for new documents based on their textual content. Our adaptations make FolkRank applicable to post-core 1 ie. the full real-world tagging datasets and address the new item problem in tag recommendation. For comparison, we also apply and evaluate the same methodology of including content on a simpler tag recommendation algorithm. This results in a less expensive recommender which suggests a combination of user related and document content related tags.</p> <p>Including content data into FolkRank shows an improvement over plain FolkRank on full tagging datasets. However, we also observe that our simpler content-aware tag recommender outperforms FolkRank with content data. Our results suggest that an optimisation of the weighting method of FolkRank is required to achieve better results.

Real-world tagging datasets have a large proportion of new/ untagged documents. Few approaches for recommending tags to a user for a document address this new item problem, concentrating instead on artificially created post-core datasets where it is guaranteed that the user as well as the document of each test post is known to the system and already has some tags assigned to it. In order to recommend tags for new documents, approaches are required which model documents not only based on the tags assigned to them in the past (if any), but also the content. In this paper we present a novel adaptation to the widely recognised FolkRank tag recommendation algorithm by including content data. We adapt the FolkRank graph to use word nodes instead of document nodes, enabling it to recommend tags for new documents based on their textual content. Our adaptations make FolkRank applicable to post-core 1 ie. the full real-world tagging datasets and address the new item problem in tag recommendation. For comparison, we also apply and evaluate the same methodology of including content on a simpler tag recommendation algorithm. This results in a less expensive recommender which suggests a combination of user related and document content related tags.</p> <p>Including content data into FolkRank shows an improvement over plain FolkRank on full tagging datasets. However, we also observe that our simpler content-aware tag recommender outperforms FolkRank with content data. Our results suggest that an optimisation of the weighting method of FolkRank is required to achieve better results.

Real-world tagging datasets have a large proportion of new/ untagged documents. Few approaches for recommending tags to a user for a document address this new item problem, concentrating instead on artificially created post-core datasets where it is guaranteed that the user as well as the document of each test post is known to the system and already has some tags assigned to it. In order to recommend tags for new documents, approaches are required which model documents not only based on the tags assigned to them in the past (if any), but also the content. In this paper we present a novel adaptation to the widely recognised FolkRank tag recommendation algorithm by including content data. We adapt the FolkRank graph to use word nodes instead of document nodes, enabling it to recommend tags for new documents based on their textual content. Our adaptations make FolkRank applicable to post-core 1 ie. the full real-world tagging datasets and address the new item problem in tag recommendation. For comparison, we also apply and evaluate the same methodology of including content on a simpler tag recommendation algorithm. This results in a less expensive recommender which suggests a combination of user related and document content related tags. Including content data into FolkRank shows an improvement over plain FolkRank on full tagging datasets. However, we also observe that our simpler content-aware tag recommender outperforms FolkRank with content data. Our results suggest that an optimisation of the weighting method of FolkRank is required to achieve better results.

The exponential growth of the social web poses challenges and new opportunities for recommender systems. The social web has turned information consumers into active contributors creating massive amounts of information. Finding relevant and interesting content at the right time and in the right context is challenging for existing recommender approaches. At the same time, social systems by their definition encourage interaction between users and both online content and other users, thus generating new sources of knowledge for recommender systems. Web 2.0 users explicitly provide personal information and implicitly express preferences through their interactions with others and the system (e.g. commenting, friending, rating, etc.). These various new sources of knowledge can be leveraged to improve recommendation techniques and develop new strategies which focus on social recommendation. The Social Web provides huge opportunities for recommender technology and in turn recommender technologies can play a part in fuelling the success of the Social Web phenomenon.</p> <p>The goal of this one day workshop was to bring together researchers and practitioners to explore, discuss, and understand challenges and new opportunities for Recommender Systems and the Social Web. The workshop consisted both of technical sessions, in which selected participants presented their results or ongoing research, as well as informal breakout sessions on more focused topics.</p> <p>Papers discussing various aspects of recommender system in the Social Web were submitted and selected for presentation and discussion in the workshop in a formal reviewing process: Case studies and novel fielded social recommender applications; Economy of community-based systems: Using recommenders to encourage users to contribute and sustain participation.; Social network and folksonomy development: Recommending friends, tags, bookmarks, blogs, music, communities etc.; Recommender systems mash-ups, Web 2.0 user interfaces, rich media recommender systems; Collaborative knowledge authoring, collective intelligence; Recommender applications involving users or groups directly in the recommendation process; Exploiting folksonomies, social network information, interaction, user context and communities or groups for recommendations; Trust and reputation aware social recommendations; Semantic Web recommender systems, use of ontologies or microformats; Empirical evaluation of social recommender techniques, success and failure measures</p> <p>Full workshop details are available at http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~ssanand/RSWeb11/index.htm