Web Mining and Social Networking: Techniques and ... - tud.ttu.ee

9.2 Future Directions 193The following research questions need to be thoroughly studied and addressed inthe future:• Q1.What model is suitable for capturing the relationships between Web documentsand human behavior information?• Q2. How do we conduct social media mining and social network computingbased on such a model• Q3. How do we devise new paradigms or extend the existing algorithms in relatedresearch context?• Q4. How do we integrate Web data mining and social network computing togetherto better analyze the human behavior and social structure?• Q5. How do we apply the theoretical researches into the real world applicationsin the context of social computing?As Web and its usage grow, it will continue to generate evermore content, structure,and usage data, and the value of Web mining will keep increasing. In particular,outlined below are some possible research directions that must be pursued to ensurethat we continue to develop Web mining technologies that will enable this value tobe realized.Web services optimizationAs services over the Web continue to grow, there will be a need to make them robust,scalable, efficient, etc. Web mining can be applied to better understand the behaviorof these services, and the knowledge extracted can be useful for various kinds ofoptimizations. Research is needed in developing Web mining techniques to improvevarious other aspects of Web services. In the context of cloud computing, particularly,Web mining could help organize various Web services in an efficient way andfacilitate end users to reach the requested Web service promptly and economically.Fraud and threat analysisThe anonymity provided by the Web has led to a significant increase in attemptedfraud, from unauthorized use of individual credit cards to hacking into credit carddatabases for blackmail purposes. Yet another example is auction fraud, which hasbeen increasing on popular sites like eBay. Since all these frauds are being perpetratedthrough the Internet, Web mining is the perfect analysis technique for detectingand preventing them. Research issues include developing techniques to recognizeknown frauds, and characterize and then recognize unknown or novel frauds, etc. Theissues in cyber threat analysis and intrusion detection are quite similar in nature.Web mining and privacyWhile there are many benefits to be gained from Web mining, a clear drawback isthe potential for severe violations of privacy. Public attitude towards privacy seems tobe almost schizophrenic - i.e. people say one thing and do quite the opposite. Some