Ubiquitous Social Networking: Concept and Evaluation

Abstract

Despite the great success of online social networks, there is still no automated way to facilitate communication between people in the physical environment. Ubiquitous social networking services target at transferring online social networking benefits to the physical world, by facilitating advantageous relationships during physical meetings between people who do not know each other, but probably they should. In this paper, we present a potential solution for establishing ubiquitous social networking services by integrating online social networks with opportunistic networks. This solution, called local social networks, focuses on uncovering relevant connections between people nearby, by providing a platform for automatic exchange of user personal information in order to discover interpersonal affinities. Firstly, we define and discuss the concept, advantages, preliminary architecture and potential future applications of local social networks as well as introduce the first prototype, named Spiderweb. Afterwards, we present results of a qualitative investigation that researched whether 16 active online social networks users would accept ubiquitous social networking services. The results revealed that all the participants perceived the usefulness of these services and 14 of them would be willing to accept all the necessary requirements for the establishment of local social networks and consequently be potential users.

The influential factors for the variation of data sensitivity in ubiquitous social networking

“…Further, we presented different scenarios from everyday lives, where these services might be applied, such as professional areas, dating and big events, e.g. conferences and exhibitions, as described in (Sapuppo, 2012b;Eagle and Pentland, 2005). Finally, we discussed with the participants the potential networking benefits in the identified application areas as well as possible privacy threats that might arise as a result of the information disclosure in USN, e.g.…”

“…country, city or neighborhood to the exact address where the user is (Iachello et al, 2005;Smith et al, 2005;Barkhuus et al, 2008). However, USN services commonly exploit opportunistic networks to promote social networking between strangers during physical meetings (Eagle and Pentland, 2005;Sapuppo, 2012b;Tamarit et al, 2009). In opportunistic networks, the data exchange is restricted to the range of the adopted wireless technology and thus users are aware about each others' location only when they are in the proximity (Sapuppo, 2012b).…”

“…However, USN services commonly exploit opportunistic networks to promote social networking between strangers during physical meetings (Eagle and Pentland, 2005;Sapuppo, 2012b;Tamarit et al, 2009). In opportunistic networks, the data exchange is restricted to the range of the adopted wireless technology and thus users are aware about each others' location only when they are in the proximity (Sapuppo, 2012b). Consequently, the granularity of the disclosed information was not considered as a relevant factor for data disclosure in USN.…”

“…When transferring online social networking benefits to the physical world, the privacy threats are indisputably increased due to support of face-to-face interactions between strangers during physical meetings (Sapuppo, 2012b). While the risk of unintentional information sharing is similar in virtual and physical worlds, the consequences of such disclosure are more crucial in the physical environments.…”

“…For example, when USN users disclose their personal information, the shared data is tied to a physical person and immediately available for the recipient (Sapuppo and Sørensen, 2011). Thus, the information disclosure can be directly translated into physical contact and potentially undesired or unpleasant face-to-face interactions (Sapuppo, 2012b). To address these privacy concerns, privacy management systems should protect users' personal data privacy as individuals do in ordinary human interactions (Bünnig, 2009a,b;Hong et al, 2004).…”