Combining Social Networks and Semantic Web Technologies for Personalizing Web Access

The original purpose of Web metadata was to protect end-users from possible harmful content and to simplify search and retrieval. However they can also be also exploited in more enhanced applications, such as Web access personalization on the basis of end-users’ preferences. In order to achieve this, it is however necessary to address several issues. One of the most relevant is how to assess the trustworthiness of Web metadata. In this paper, we discuss how such issue can be addressed through the use of collaborative and Semantic Web technologies. The system we propose is based on a Web-based Social Network, where members are able not only to specify labels, but also to rate existing labels. Both labels and ratings are then used to assess the trustworthiness of resources’ descriptions and to enforce Web access personalization.