Pointing the way: Active Collaborative Filtering

Collaborative filtering is based on the premise that people looking
for information should be able to make use of what others have already
found and evaluated.  Current collaborative filtering systems provide
tools for readers to filter documents based on which ones were read
and liked by previous readers.  This paper describes a different type
of collaborative filtering system in which people who find interesting
documents actively send "pointers" to those documents to their
colleagues.  A "pointer" contains a hypertext link to the source
document as well as contextual information intended to help the
recipient determine the potential interest and relevance of the
document prior to accessing it.  A preliminary version of our system
has already proven easy t o use, with people using it to "bookmark"
documents, send pointers to their colleagues and create "digests" that
combine pointers with original text. Based on our experience we
discuss the benefits of this form of filtering as well as its
limitations.