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Knowledge-Based Systems 12 (1999) 427–431 /locate/knosys Let’s browse: a collaborative browsing agent H. Lieberman*, N. van Dyke, A. Vivacqua Media Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Received 1 June 1999; accepted 18 June 1999 Abstract Web browsing, like most of today’s desktop applications, is usually a solitary activity. Other forms of media, such as watching television, are often done by groups of people, such as families or friends. What would it be like to do collaborative Web browsing? Could the computer provide assistance to group browsing by trying to help find mutual interests among the participants? Let’s Browse is an experiment in building an agent to assist a group of people in browsing, by suggesting new material likely to be of common interest. It is built as an extension to the single user Web browsing agent Letizia. Let’s Browse features automatic detection of the presence of users, automated “channel surfing” browsing, and dynamic display of the user profiles and explanation of recommendations. 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Browsing; Collaboration; Agents; User profiles 1. Collaborative browsing which performs reconnaissance on Web pages. Letizia proactively fetches links from the page currently viewed, Increasingly, Web browsing will be performed in colla- and chooses those pages that best match a user profile borative settings, such as a f