Context-Awareness, the missing block of Social Networking

All Rights Reserved © Alcatel-Lucent 2008

Context-AwarenessContext-AwarenessThe missing block of Social NetworkingThe missing block of Social Networking

Laboratoire Hubert Curien, St Etienne, 13/11/2008Laboratoire Hubert Curien, St Etienne, 13/11/2008

Adrien JOLY 1,2, Pierre MARET 3 and Johann DAIGREMONT 1

1 Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs France, Applications Domain, Social Commmunications Dpt.2 Université de Lyon, LIRIS (CNRS UMR5205) / INSA-Lyon3 Université de Lyon, Laboratoire Hubert Curien (CNRS UMR5516), Saint-Etienne


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2 | Context Awareness, the missing block of Social Networking | September 2008

Motivation

•New trend: Social Networking Sites (SNS)

more communication

•New trend: Allways-on connectivity

communication on the move

•Fact: SNS communication is triggered by sharing/managing information

•Issue: Sharing and managing social information is a burden

•Proposition: Use context-awareness to improve SNS communication

Share more, type less => better social communication


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Outline

1. Introduction and Background

2. How do SNS work?

3. How can context-awareness help?

4. Conclusions


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Introduction and BackgroundIntroduction and Background

1. How do we communicate?

2. Social Networking Sites (SNS)

3. Context-awareness


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How do we communicate? Introduction

• Spontaneous communication : Serendipitous encounters

• Written communication : Letters, Telegraphs, Emails, SMS, IM

• Synchronous communication : Walkie-talkie, phones, IM

• Public communication : Blog, forums, chatrooms, virtual worlds, MMO*G

Mobile devices and ubiquitous wireless connectivity new usages

• SMS as a discreet way to keep in touch in (almost) any situation

• Recurrent « where are you? » phone calls

• Broadcasting « what are you doing? » in real-time on Twitter

Convergent communication paradigm: Social Networking Sites

keep in touch and interact with a community of contacts over the web

Introduction & BackgroundHow do SNS work ?Context-Aware SNS

Conclusions


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Introducing Social Networking Sites (SNS)Background (1/2)

Main concepts:

• Contacts / friends : mutual connection

• User profile / space : page visible by contacts

Community = mutually connected contacts/friends

Main actions:

• Profile personalization

• Profile messaging (« wall »)

• Photos + comments + « tagging »

• Notification of status and interactions

Successful SNS surveyed here:


Conclusions


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Introducing Context-AwarenessBackground (2/2)

Prediction => Pro-activity and Decision Support

Situation recognition

Context management (sensors: bluetooth, GPS, agenda, currently opened documents…)


Conclusions


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How do Social Networking Sites work How do Social Networking Sites work ??

1. Meaning of relationships

2. User profiles

3. New social interaction modalities

4. Feeds of social updates

5. User profile enhancement – Applications

6. Many opportunities to communicate


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Meaning of relationshipsHow do SNS work? (1/6)

• Like for IM: mutual connection for communication

• Classmates.com (1995) => obvious

• Myspace.com => weak mutual friendship(music/artist fans, teenage ego boost…)=> social browsing

• Facebook.com => real mutual friendship(to keep in touch with acquaintances/friends)=> social searching

• Linkedin.com => mutual connectionmostly colleagues + potential collaborators=> « 6-degrees » effect

• Twitter.com => « followers » are notified,twitters write for their followers (like blog)

friends

friends

followers

contacts

Introduction & Background How do SNS work ?

Context-Aware SNSConclusions


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User profileHow do SNS work? (2/6)

Profile picture

Profile information

Friends

Application gadgets

Content (e.g. videos)

« Wall » messages




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New social interaction modalities How do SNS work? (3/6)

• Profile messaging / wall

• Simple message public announcement to one’s community

• New rituals: « thanks for the add » message, recommendations…

• Bulletins / posted items

• Announcements visible to all contacts (e.g. events)

• « Poke »: notified proof of attention + temporary friendship

• Gifts: distinctive sign of affection, can be bought to a friend

• Others

• Tagging of people, comparizon and matching of user profiles (e.g. movies, music, books etc…) and quizz results, games (e.g. poker), etc…




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Feeds of social updates How do SNS work? (4/6)

« What are you doing? » status message (twitter.com, 2006)

• « Micro-blogging » 140-long messages, usable by SMS mobile SNS

• Uses: share opinions & mood, spread news, buzz marketing, earthquakes!

Social interactions history

• Profile changes (e.g. current job position, marital status change)

• Public messages and comments

• Application specific notifications (e.g. invitations, results…)

History feeds

• One’s profile history (public): his interactions

• One’s social history (personal): interactions of his community

Viral spreading of community updates without explicit advertisement

+ respect of precise privacy preferences = social feeling of the

community




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User profile enhancement – Applications How do SNS work? (5/6)

2007: Facebook platform for third-party social applications

• Developers create apps new kinds of interactions

• Users « add » apps to their profile to show/use them

• Apps. leverage the user’s social network and personal info.

Adoption of the « platform » architecture by competitors

Google OpenSocial

• An open API to create interoperable social apps

• One application several SNS (OpenSocial compliant)

• Adopted by LinkedIn, Orkut, Bebo, Hi5 + many other popular SNS

• Facebook’s API is still proprietary no plans for interoperability




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Many opportunities to communicate How do SNS work? (6/6)

SNS = generalization of comment-based communication (blogs, forums etc…)

• A friend posts an item (bulletin, photo, quizz result…) you are notified

• You can respond relevantly to this item you comment

• Your community is notified about your comment they can join

A social conversation has just started, in the context of the post

The value is in the conversation; the post is the trigger

• Benefits of SNS increase with contributions (posts)

• BUT contribution costs time

Entreprises want to benefit from SNS but they fear productivity issues




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Towards context-aware Social Networking Towards context-aware Social Networking SitesSites

1. Opportunities of improvement

2. Assisting SNS content sharing

3. Assisting SNS contact mgt. & awareness


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Towards context-aware Social Networking Sites (1/3)

SNS become popular sharing more information with more people

• Sharing (e.g. photo) = trigger for contextualized communication

• BUT sharing has no added value + it’s time-consuming

• Contact management & awareness becomes tedious

• Browsing the contacts must be reworked (e.g. visualization as a graph?)

• Too many « social updates » to follow filter by relevance

Proposition: leverage sampled context information to…

1. Assist sharing of information

2. Assist contact management and awareness

Introduction & BackgroundHow do SNS work ?



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2) Assisting SNS content sharing with context informationTowards context-aware Social Networking Sites (2/3)

• SNS conversations are comments in context of some shared

content

• Context-aware devices can provide content such as: owner’s

location, activity, surrounding people, agenda…

Conversations could be triggered by sharing context samples

Examples:

• Get tips from friends when travelling (context: location)

• Contact proximity notification (location, social network analysis)

• Activity planning assistance (social network analysis, agenda)

• Social matchmaking and advertizing




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Assisting SNS contact management & awarenessTowards context-aware Social Networking Sites (3/3)

Issues with SNS contact management & awareness:

• A list of 50 contacts is OK, but what about 200+ contacts?

• How to represent contacts (e.g. as a graph?)

• How to select/filter contacts (e.g. context of meeting?)

• Need to filter social notifications/updates when too many

• How to select interesting/relevant updates?

• How to summarize updates according to social proximity?

Context fills the gap between the SNS and real-world situation

Context-awareness can improve the SNS experience

• By bringing more relevance in social awareness

• And thus, less burden and « social noise » towards more effective communication




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Conclusion and future worksConclusion and future works


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Conclusionand future works

Identified 2 opportunities to enhance SNS with context-awareness:

• Assist sharing of contextual information to trigger conversations

• Assist contact management and awareness

User can focus on conversation, instead of SNS management

Future works

• Study relevance of social updates within user’s context

• Design a context-aware view of social updates

• Mining SNS interactions to identify communication patterns, in order to recommend applications with specialized social workflow

• E.g. assist the creation of an event when a contacts are exchanging messages dealing with meeting dates and places

• Experiment the assisted sharing of contextual samples to trigger SNS conversations


Context-Aware SNS Conclusions


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Context-Awareness, the missing block of Social Networking