The document discusses the Observer Service, initiated in February 2007, that allows users to manage information overload from virtual communities by focusing on specific activities of interest. It includes mechanisms for users to customize their perception of community activity based on personal interests and social network affinities, using web feeds to track relevant events. Future developments aim to enhance attention models and improve the event framework for better filtering and ranking of social interactions.

1. observer service ongoing research (started in feb 07) Nicolas Maisonneuve INSEAD CALT http://www.calt.insead.edu/

2. It’s about Context: The belonging to several virtual Communities 2.0 (of practice/interest) exposing their activity data with a web feed (RSS/Atom) mechanism Problem: Situation awareness overload Approach: Mechanism to create a customizable perception of the communities’ activity Futur works

3. Context

4. Context

5. Problem

6. Problem

7. Problem / approach

8. Observer Service Like the human visual system providing a way to focus only on a subpart of what a human actually views, the observer service allows a user (or an agent) to focus his perception on a certain aspect of the activity of the community according to his intentions.

9. Observer Service

10. Observer Service: focus aspect Examples: I want to be aware only about People oriented activity: When new people are connected the activity of a friend in a given community.. the activity around my published posts (e.g. who read it) Resource oriented activity: new messages related to a given topic/issue only popular/important messages about a topic because I’m not so much a fan about that topic

11. Observer Service: granularity aspect Example of user’s profile for the topic aspect. The distribution of the thresholds of interest by topic. ( for a given topic the more the level is high, the more the messages about this topic are filtered to receive only the important ones) Example of user’s profile for the SN aspect. The distribution of the thresholds of interest for the member of his SN/community. ( for a given user , the more the level is high, the more the messages from this user are filtered to receive only the important ones) Configuring my perception of the environment (i.e. the information I will receive from it) according to: - my interest (I’m a priori more interested by posts about technology than about business). my affinity in a Social Network (I’m a priori more interested by new posts from my friend user A than the work of the user B)

12. How create a channel? Model of an event Event = {user, action/type, resource (optional), date, source}. Arborescence of the event’s properties Description event.type The type of event (creating, reading, etc..) event.source The source’s name where the event comes (a specific community , skype or email, web feed) event.resource.id The ‘s id of the resource event.resource.tag The tag belonging to the resource , (e.g. the message’s topic) event.resource.type (e.g. a message, a conversation , a user) event.resource.activitylevel The level of activity (e.g. number of time a message has been read, or could be the % of diffusion in the community (i.e ratio readers/members) event.author The author’s name of the event event.author.tag The author’s tag (e.g. the author’s role, the author’s team)

13. How create a channel? Usage (no user interface for the moment, just an url to create) URL: http://perceptionmodule/watch Arguments: A combination of criteria following the format: event.property = value according to the event model describe Results : A web feed Examples: A member wishes to be informed: When new threads are created. http://perceptionmodule/watch? event.ressource.type=thread & event.type=creating When of new threads are created on the “technology” subject. http://perceptionmodule/watch? event.ressource.type=thread & event.type=creating & event.resource.tag=technology Only about important threads on meeting (i.e. a high level of activity). http://perceptionmodule/watch? event.ressource.type=thread & event.type=creating & event.resource.activitylevel=20 & event.resource.tag=meeting … see Delivrable 3.2 for more examples So the user can create several web feeds to perceive the activity of the environment according to his profile of interest/social network (e.g. configuring each web feed for a given topic with a given threshold of of interest), as described in the slide #11

14. Futur works Research aspect Attention model for the social activity: use the analogy with the visual attention models (visual sampling / visual search used in aviation and robotics) Integration of attention profiles (APML) Improve the event model with social and activity properties to be able to filter/rank events (e.g. include a level of reputation for an author) (information ranking model according to a selected attention profile) Development aspect UI for the end-user (web2.0 widget) Integrate conversations from email/skype (perception module) Integration of visualization (people tag cloud as a useful visualization tool in a SN context , see my blog http://nico.maisonneuve.free.fr )

15. Watch Service