Feature-based and clique-based user models for movie selection: A comparative study

The huge amount of information available in the currently evolving world wide information infrastructure at any one time can easily overwhelm end-users. One way to address the information explosion is to use an 'information filtering agent' which can select information according to the interest and/or need of an end-user. However, at present few information filtering agents exist for the evolving world wide multimedia information infrastructure. In this study, we evaluate the use of feature-based approaches to user modeling with the purpose of creating a filtering agent for the video-on-demand application. We evaluate several feature and clique-based models for 10 voluntary subjects who provided ratings for the movies. Our preliminary results suggest that feature-based selection can be a useful tool to recommend movies according to the taste of the user and can be as effective as a movie rating expert. We compare our feature-based approach with a clique-based approach, which has advantages where information from other users is available.