Preface to the Special Issue on Personalization in Social Web systems

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The new generation of web systems known as Web 2.0 or Social Web systems offers a new challenge to the researchers and practitioners working on Web personalization. An already broad stream of new information created by owners and developers ofWeb sites and information systems is being joined by another stream of information produced by the users of various kinds of social systems—from user-submitted content in various blogs and wiki sites, to shared bookmarks, pictures, and movies on social bookmarking and tagging sites, to a range of information about users themselves on social networking sites. The need for personalization in Social Web systems is arguably even more important than in traditional Web systems. Not only is the volume of user-contributed information potentially much larger, but also traditional information access infrastructure (such as indexes, directories, information maps) is typically not available in Social Web systems. For example, finding a relevant blog post in a chaotic distributed blogosphere is much harder than finding a relevant news article in a well-organized news site. While sometimes considered a luxury in classic information systems, personalization has become a necessity in Social Web systems. A number of research groups worldwide have already begun to explore classic personalization techniques in this new context; however, early results frequently demonstrate that a mere reuse of old techniques is not always the best way forward as these technologiesmay notwork efficientlywithin the new contexts. New ideas, approaches,