Appification of the Web (AppWeb2012)
Workshop at the 21st World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2012)
http://sites.google.com/site/appweb2012/
April 16, 2012 - Lyon, France

We solicit submissions for the Workshop on Appification of the Web, to be held on April 16, 2012, in Lyon, France, in conjunction with the 21st World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2012). The workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners from industry and academia to discuss the impact of mobile apps on the Web search and browsing paradigms.

Recent proliferation of smartphones and tablet devices is due at least in part to the advent of apps, which customize and streamline user experience in a variety of usage scenarios. Today, hundreds of thousands of apps exist on the major mobile OS platforms (notably, iOS and Android), and we are witnessing a clear change in the way people consume and interact with information online. Beyond the mobile devices, we are witnessing the increasing availability of OS-level apps (in Mac OS, and forthcoming in Windows) as well as browser apps (notably, in Google Chrome). In many cases, users' information needs can be satisfied by an app or a combination thereof, completely circumventing the heretofore predominant Web search and browsing paradigms. For instance, instead of searching for travel options on the Web, one can directly use one of the popular travel apps. According to a recent survey, typical iPhone users have 108 apps installed on their device, and spend on average 84 minutes a day using them, thus confirming that changes in information consumption patterns on the Web are already well under way.

The primary objective of the workshop is to understand and to quantify the changes in Web usage due to the apps. The secondary objective is to understand the forthcoming changes, e.g., whether the role of Web search is likely to be fundamentally transformed, as apps satisfy an increasing fraction of user's information needs.

Papers from a rich set of empirical, experimental, and theoretical perspectives are invited. Topics of interest for the workshop include but are not limited to:
- Do mobile apps provide a fundamentally better user experience?
- Understanding why and to what extent users tend to invoke apps directly instead of using Web search and browsing. Will mobile apps cause Web search in the future to be limited only to tail queries?
- Web search as an app recommendation system. Surfacing apps that are relevant to user's search queries and are likely to help users accomplish their goals faster. Satisfying user's action needs with apps.
- New approaches to app indexing and search. More generally, the design of app retrieval systems, which take into account the plurality of information available about each app, including its textual description as well as meta-information, such as reviews, ratings, related queries, etc.
- Apps as a new frontier in Web monetization
- Do apps provide better user retention?
- Building richer user profiles based on app usage ("you are what you app")
- Chaining multiple apps to help users complete complex tasks
- Changes in mobile Web usage due to the availability of significant local processing power, as opposed to solely centralized processing. Ramifications of applications that use both local and cloud computation, as exemplified by the Opera and recently released Amazon Silk browsers.

The workshop will include invited talks as well as presentations of accepted research contributions.

Registration will be open to all WWW 2012 attendees.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Submissions should report new (unpublished) research results or ongoing research. Submissions can be 6-8 pages long for full papers, and 3-4 pages long for short papers. Papers must be in English and must be submitted as PDF files. Papers should be formatted in double-column ACM SIG proceedings format (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates; for LaTeX, use "Option 2"). Papers should be submitted electronically using the EasyChair system at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=appweb2012 no later than 23:59 Pacific Standard Time, February 5, 2012.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission Deadline: February 5, 2012
Acceptance notification: March 8, 2012
Camera-ready submission: March 15, 2012
Workshop date: April 16, 2012