Eyebrowse: Selective and Public Web Activity Sharing

Amy X. Zhang, David R. Karger, Joshua Blum

Abstract: Browsing the Internet today is for the most part a private ex-perience, with the exception of a few websites. We explore the possibilities and design considerations around a system to make browsing the web a more social activity. In order to address this, we present a system called Eyebrowse that allows users to selectively share their web browsing activ-ity publicly and with friends, using a whitelist at the domain level. This opens up the capabilities to conduct discussions both in real-time and asynchronously around webpages that are designated by the user as a “public space”, much like public spaces in real life. Eyebrowse also allows users to find interesting content recommendations, collect personal, web-scale, and friend browsing analytics, and maintain a public persona around their browsing data.