LIGHT: Enabling Instant Communication for Web Surfers with Momentary Needs

摘要

In the real physical world, people visit same places for same or similar purposes, where they meet, talk, exchange ideas/feelings/emotions, help each other, develop relationships, and form communities. On the web, web surfers also visit various places that are web resources such as pages, images, and videos. However, normally they do not get to meet and interact because the web is "dark" and they cannot see each other. In this paper we describe the LIGHT project that aims at "lighting up" the web so that web surfers can meet and interact spontaneously at random places. In particular, LIGHT provides a universal solution based on a browser extension, enabling convenient and instant online communication for web surfers visiting the same or similar URLs. A URL contains instance-level information precisely describing a very specific interest. Thus LIGHT complements the communication facilities provided by online community portals, which exist to serve the social needs and general/long-term interests of online community members. This complementation is significant because there are far more momentary/situational/specific human needs and interests than those long-term/general ones.