Users accessing this site created a personal profile, which they could modify over time, listing their interests and preferences in such areas as music or film. Users also joined special interest communities, thus accessing bulletin boards and chat rooms filled with other users interested in the same topic. Firefly, and other sites like it, is based on the idea that websites can learn about their users, producing demographics, promoting products, and customizing the interface. For example, take a look at Learn Sesame , by Bowne Internet Solutions , the structure of which is pictured at right. Learn Sesame enables a Web site, network, or application to deliver content, user interface, advertising, and product recommendations that are customized and targeted to each individual user.
Customized websites are nice, and for many users, convenient.
The solution to this problem is to delegate the task of creating user agents to a third party, one which will mediate between the user and the website. However, it may often be beneficial to delegate these personalization tasks to a third party. User models can be based on the interactions between users and more than one agent, which may lead to richer user models. User models can be available to more than one agent, which avoids repeated acquisition of the same information and hence may decrease obtrusiveness of the human-agent interface. What this will generally mean is that some program, acting on behalf of the user, will interact with the website.