As social networking becomes more popular, sensitive personal information seems to become much more readily available on the web. Although some social networks have privacy settings the user can change, some user-created data is simply unchangeable, and thus, remains public. Websites inadvertently store information such as links clicked on, liked, favorited,...

People frequently use social media to find information that may not be readily available from search engines or to request input from their peers. However, the search technology built into conventional social media platforms is not designed for information retrieval purposes. Since content is not archived, it is difficult to find answers to similar...

The explosive and viral nature of social media creates massive amounts of high-dimensional data. Features such as hashtags, keywords, or slang words are created every day and quickly become popular within a short period of time. However, social media data is not fully structured and its features are usually not predefined. One way to resolve this problem...

Background Recommendations of user-to-user relationships (“friends”) and items (e.g., products, services) have become integral to the social media experience. When implemented effectively, both the user and the platform gain value. Unlike established sites however, newly launched social media sites lack the historical data typically necessary...