Ontological subscription and blocking system that alleviates information overload in social blogs

This work develops a novel Ontological Subscription and Blocking System (OSBS), an ontology-based system, that helps users of social blogs specify policies for subscription and message blocking in social blogs to eliminate information overload. This system uses ontology, metadata, and rules to deliver subscribed posts, block unwanted posts, and detect policy conflicts. A laboratory experiment is conducted to assess the effectiveness of the OSBS in alleviating information overload. Experimental results indicate that the OSBS eliminates information overload.