Kevin Tiene

MessageWorld: a new approach to facilitating asynchronous group communication

We describe a prototype system called Me~ageWorld designed to offer a new approach to online communication. MessageWorld provides an alternative to traditional group information sharing tools such as e-mail, online bulletin boards, and searchable storage archives. MessageWorld relieves message authors of the burden of addressing, while prospective readers are relieved of the burden of searching; the system provides a rendezvous mechanism for uniting readers with messages of interest to them. We rely on a variety of techniques including traditional content analysis and the correlation of user preferences. Adaptive algorithms serve to incorporate some of the knowledge of the user community in the system’s assessment of each user’s interests.