SOLAR: Social Link Advanced Recommendation System

In today's information society, precise descriptions of the massive volume of online content available are crucial for responding to user needs adequately and efficiently. The Semantic Web Paradigm has recently advanced across many domains for the assignment of metadata to Internet content, in order to define it with explicit, machine-readable meaning. This content has become so extensive that it must be refined according to user preferences to avoid information overload. The current paper proposes a framework for the association of semantic data to webpage links based on a specific domain ontology, additionally permitting the user to express his opinion regarding his emotions about the content of the link. This data is further exploited to suggest additional links to the user, based on the semantic metadata and the level of user satisfaction with previously viewed content. A comprehensive evaluation of the tool has demonstrated a high level of user satisfaction with the features of the system. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.