The use of contextually aware, pervasive, distributed computing, and sensor networks to bridge the gap between the physical and online worlds is the basis of mobile social networking. This book shows how applications can be built to provide mobile social networking, the research issues that need to be solved to enable this vision, and how mobile social networking can be used to provide computational intelligence that will improve daily life. With contributions from the fields of sociology, computer science, human-computer interaction and design, this book demonstrates how mobile social networks can be inferred from users' physical interactions both with the environment and with others, as well as how users behave around them and how their behavior differs on mobile vs. traditional online social networks.

The widespread availability of mobile devices along with recent advancements in networking capabilities make opportunistic mobile social networks (MSNs) one of the most promising technologies for next-generation mobile applications. Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks supplies a new perspective of these networks that can help you enhance spontaneous interaction and communication among users that opportunistically encounter each other, without additional infrastructure support. The book explores recent developments in the theoretical, algorithmic, and application-based aspects of opportunistic MSNs. It presents the motivation behind opportunistic MSNs, describes their underpinning and key concepts, and also explores ongoing research. Supplies a systematic study of the constrained information flow problem Reviews the recent literature on social influence in complex social networks Presents a complete overview of the fundamental characteristics of link-level connectivity in opportunistic networks Explains how mobility and dynamic network structure impact the processing capacity of opportunistic MSNs for cloud applications Provides a comprehensive overview of the routing schemes proposed in opportunistic MSNs Taking an in-depth look at multicast protocols, the book explains how to provide pervasive data access to mobile users without the support of cellular or Internet infrastructures. Considering privacy and security issues, it surveys a collection of cutting-edge approaches for minimizing privacy leakage during opportunistic user profile exchange. The book concludes by introducing a framework for mobile peer rating using a multi-dimensional metric scheme based on encounter and location testing. It also explains how to develop a network emulation test bed for validating the efficient operation of opportunistic network applications and protocols in scenarios that involve both node mobility and wireless communication.

Recent advancements in mobile device technologies are revolutionizing how we socialize, interact, and connect. By connecting the virtual community with the local environment, mobile social networks (MSNs) create the opportunity for a multitude of new personalized services for mobile users. Along with that comes the need for new paradigms, mechanisms, and techniques with the capacity to autonomously manage their functioning and evolution. Currently, most books about mobile networks focus mainly on the technical point of view. Mobile Social Networking and Computing: A Multidisciplinary Integrated Perspective not only addresses the theoretical aspects of MSN and computing, but also introduces and categorizes existing applications. It supplies a multidisciplinary perspective that considers the technology, economics, social sciences, and psychology behind MSNs. In addition to fundamental theory, the book investigates the practical issues in MSN, including characteristics, inner structural relationship, incentive mechanisms, resource allocating, information diffusion, search, ranking, privacy, trust, and reputation. Introducing recently developed technologies, modes, and models, the book provides two distinct (but related) viewpoints about MSN applications: socially inspired networking technology and networking technology that uses recent advancements to enhance quality of life. The text illustrates the interaction between the macrolevel structure and the local rational behaviors (microlevel) in MSN. It summarizes currently available MSN development platforms, including Android and iOS, and introduces and categorizes existing applications related to MSN and computing. Both location-based service (LBS) and mobile social networks in proximity (MSNPs) are presented in a comprehensive manner. Highlighting key research opportunities, this much-needed reference outlines incentive mechanisms inspired by classical economics, behavioral economics, and social psychology, and, perhaps for the first time, it presents a summary of the economic and business models of MSNs.

Uncovers the growing and expanding phenomenon of human behavior, social constructs, and communication in online environments.

This book investigates the modeling and optimization issues in mobile social networks (MSNs). Firstly, the architecture and applications of MSNs are examined. The existing works on MSNs are reviewed by specifying the critical challenges and research issues. Then, with the introduction of MSN-based social graph and information dissemination mechanisms, the analytical model for epidemic information dissemination with opportunistic Links in MSNs is discussed. In addition, optimal resource allocation is studied based on a heterogeneous architecture, which provides mobile social services with high capacity and low latency. Finally, this book summarize some open problems and future research directions in MSNs. Written for researchers and academics, this book is useful for anyone working on mobile networks, network architecture, or content delivery. It is also valuable for advanced-level students of computer science.

This book deepens the understanding of people through smartphone data obtained via mobile sensing and applies psychological insights for social networking applications. The author first introduces TYDR, an application for researching smartphone data and user personality. A novel, structured privacy model for mobile sensing applications is developed and the obtained empirical results help researchers gauge what data they can expect users to share in daily-life studies. The new research findings, the concept of mobile sensing, and psychological insights about the formation and structure of real-life social networks are integrated into the field of social networking. Finally, for this novel integration, the author presents concepts, decentralized software architectures, and fully realized prototypes that recommend new contacts, media, and locations to individual users and groups of users.

This book focuses on three emerging research topics in mobile social networks (MSNs): privacy-preserving profile matching (PPM) protocols, privacy-preserving cooperative data forwarding (PDF) protocols, and trustworthy service evaluation (TSE) systems. The PPM helps two users compare their personal profiles without disclosing the profiles. The PDF helps users forward data to their friends via multiple cooperative relay peers while preserving their identity and location privacy. The TSE enables users to locally share service reviews on the vendors such that users receive more valuable information about the services not only from vendors but also from their trusted social friends. The authors address both theoretic and practical aspects of these topics by introducing the system model, reviewing the related works, and presenting the solutions. Security and Privacy for Mobile Social Networks further provides the security analysis and the performance evaluation based on real-trace simulations. It also summarizes the future research directions for this rapidly growing area of research. The book will be valuable for researchers and practitioners who work with mobile social networks, communication platforms, wireless communication techniques, and internet applications. "Suitable for any type of reader as an introduction to the topic... The chapters are well motivated and presented... It is recommended for researchers." -ACM Computing Reviews, 21 July 2014