From Usenet to CoWebs: Interacting with Social Information Spaces

This book provides an overview of interfaces to social information spaces, illustrated by several contemporary systems including Usenet News and CoWebs. Beginning with a general outline of those systems and a history of Usenet News, it looks at the problems of exploring virtual communities and distributed information systems, and of finding information in electronic environments. It outlines the successes and failures of traditional approaches like information filtering, collaborative filte...