Search informed by a semiotic approach in Social Network Services

Social Network Services (SNS) represent an opportunity to access information and knowledge through the Web. These systems allow individuals to constitute communities of common interests with wide cultural diversity, sharing information and vocabularies. Search engines in SNS should take info account the meanings created, shared and used by people through the use of the system. This paper investigates a new approach to adequate search in SNS based on these characteristics. We propose a Dove) search mechanism grounded in Semantic Web technologies combined with a method coming from Organisational Semiotics (OS). We illustrate a process and techniques to improve semantic search results in SNS, with practical and technological results that could be achieved using the proposed approach.