Let's browse: a collaborative browsing agent

Web browsing, like most of today’s desktop applications, is usually a solitary activity. Other forms of media, such as watching television, are often done by groups of people, such as families or friends. What would it be like to do collaborative Web browsing? Could the computer provide assistance to group browsing by trying to help find mutual interests among the participants? Let’s Browse is an experiment in building an agent to assist a group of people in browsing, by suggesting new material likely to be of common interest. It is built as an extension to the single user Web browsing agent Letizia. Let’s Browse features automatic detection of the presence of users, automated “channel surfing” browsing, and dynamic display of the user profiles and explanation of recommendations. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All