System and method for inferring user interest based on analysis of user-generated metadata

摘要

User-generated tags from viewing web-based content are collected over a predetermined period of time. A subset of distinct or unique tags is identified from among the collected tags. A z-score is calculated for each identified distinct tag, where the z-score is a measure of the statistical significance of the tag. The subset of distinct tags is then sorted based on their corresponding z-score. All distinct tags having a corresponding z-score lower than a predetermined threshold are rejected and the remaining distinct tags, having a corresponding z-score higher than the threshold are used to infer a user's interest. The ability to infer a user's interests from the remaining distinct tags may thus benefit web-based applications by achieving a high degree of accuracy in predicting the interests of users by leveraging on the use of the user generated content tags and keywords.