Limitations of community Web portals: a classmates' case study

We analyze typical Web portals supporting communication, data sharing and activities of former classmates. The inflexibility and restrictions imposed on users of such portals are demonstrated to support the thesis that introduction of community-driven ontology management is crucial for full-fledged satisfaction of the user needs on the semantic Web.

1. Introduction

An idea of providing a service for reunion of ex-classmates is proved to be a success by resulting in a large number of highly popular web portals with a multitude of users registered at the largest portals. For instance, more than 75 thousands of classmate groups are registered internationally at Yahoo groups¹

Yahoo Groups: http://groups.yahoo.com

and more than 35 millions of users are registered at a national US and Canadian level (portal Classmates.com uniting graduates of the US and Canadian schools). In relation to other commercial services offered on the Web, the service providing a communication environment for ex-classmates also proved to be promising. For instance, the portal Classmates.com has one of the largest subscriber bases on the Web for paid content and is consistently ranked by Nielsen//Net Ratings as one of the most highly trafficked Web channels.