Behavior Patterns of Information Discovery in Social Bookmarking Service

Abstract

The paper describes an analysis of users' behaviors in discovering useful information resources by using social bookmarking service. The aims of the analysis are to evaluate the effectiveness of social bookmarking service for information discovery and to propose improvements in its navigational function. We analyzed users' behaviors of information discovery in an experimental social bookmarking service and evaluated the effectiveness of social navigation for information discovery. The results of the analysis show users frequently select tags to focus topics to search and prefer to browse others' libraries to find related information around the focused topics.