Title: Friend Lens: novel web content sharing through strategic manipulation of cached html

Authors: John W. Gibbons; Arvin Agah

Addresses: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045-7621, USA. ' Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045-7621, USA

Abstract: Current methods of content sharing include blogs, social networking sites, and social bookmarking sites. This article details the construction and novel features of Friend Lens, a web application that allows users to both author original content and to extract complete copies of external sites using PHP, making it a hybrid blog and social booking site. Friend Lens implements a method of collaboration with the ability to highlight posts and to make a composite of multiple highlights across many users. Composite highlights use a colour scale to emphasise the content that received the most highlights. Unlike popular social bookmarking sites like Clipmarks or Diigo, all of Friend Lens' functionality works with the need to install a browser plug-in. To evaluate Friend Lens, human subjects rated Facebook, Clipmarks, and Friend Lens in three general categories: community, posting content, and practicality of use. The results are reported in this article.

Keywords: web content sharing; blogs; weblogs; web based communities; virtual communities; online communities; cached html; web collaboration; social bookmarking; social networking.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2012.046260

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2012 Vol.8 No.2, pp.242 - 265

Published online: 20 Aug 2014 *

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