Using Tag Recommendations to Homogenize Folksonomies in Microblogging Environments

Microblogging applications such as Twitter are experiencing tremendous success. Twitter users use hashtags to categorize posted messages which aim at bringing order to the chaos of the Twittersphere. However, the percentage of messages including hashtags is very small and the used hashtags are very heterogeneous as hashtags may be chosen freely and may consist of any arbitrary combination of characters. This heterogeneity and the lack of use of hashtags lead to significant drawbacks in regards of the search functionality as messages are not categorized in a homogeneous way. In this paper we present an approach for the recommendation of hashtags suitable for the tweet the user currently enters which aims at creating a more homogeneous set of hashtags. Furthermore, users are encouraged to using hashtags as they are provided with suitable recommendations for hashtags.