Workshop on Online Social
Networks
Participation by
invitation only
Microsoft Research
Cambridge, UK.
December 7, 2007.
Social Mobility
Jon Crowcroft (University
of Cambridge)
Abstract:
Social Networks
and Mobility are only just starting to be combined. Two boring ways to do
this are: i) offering social network access on
mobile device (merely a matter of coping with reduced network capacity and
screen real estate, and somewhat different interaction paradigms); ii) making
location services that are somewhat socially aware (what used to be called
"contextual computing").
Studies of human
mobility patterns reveal that one can extract rich social structural
information directly from contact (co-location) distributions. In this talk,
I will briefly describe ongoing work at Thomson Labs to combine the so-called
traditional (legacy) social network structures (friends of friends on facebook or linkedin etc) with
new mobility information (contact of contact in bluetooth
or wifi encounters).
Two uses of the
combined information: a) expanding and subtly altering one's social net
(allowing for the somewhat different nature of static references in online
communities, from face-to-face encounters in Real Life); using the social
network (a priori, and learned, contacts and interests and tags) for
efficient dissemination of information in wireless ad hoc communities.
|