Looking for Non-existent Information: A Consumer-led Interactive Search Approach
Exponential growth of user-generated content (UGC) on the Web demands an effective way for information consumers to acquire what they need. Specialized UGC search services outperform general-purpose search engines that usually have difficulties retrieving UGC or rank them low. However, with existing UGC search services, consumers may only be able to acquire information that is related to their needs rather than the exact information what they want. In this paper, we present a novel consumer-led interactive search approach that can help consumers acquire the information they exactly want through a consumer-led interactive search process where invited information providers jointly create such information on the fly.