Spontaneous Social Networks

Information

• Publication Type: Master Thesis
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Visualization Group
• Date: 2011
• TU Wien Library:
• First Supervisor:
  • Eduard Gröller
  • Peter Rautek

Abstract

Social networks are a well researched field. There is extensive literature covering this topic. They are nowadays used for a wide variety of applications such as business, education, medicine and dating. These applications contribute to the high popularity of social networks. The underlying concept of all social networking applications is a graph, that consists of nodes representing people and edges representing social relations. This social graph is commonly very rigid in semantics and tedious to manipulate. Two users can add an edge only by mutually accepting the relation. Typically this graph manipulation needs manual intervention. In contrast, Spontaneous Social Networks (SSNs) rely on much more flexible graphs that are manipulated with minimal manual intervention. Edges are automatically generated and deleted in real time by hardware devices such as smartphones and desktop PCs. Applications operate on top of SSNs. The application defines the purpose and properties of the SSN and provides the users an interface to a SSN. The goal of this diploma thesis is the design of a standard and an implementation of a Spontaneous Social Networking (SSN) framework. The capabilities of the framework are demonstrated by a number of example applications. The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) and the Publish-Subscribe (PubSub) paradigm are used for communication in SSNs. The properties and discovery approaches of SSNs are defined. The implementation is evaluated in terms of usability with the help of the System Usability Scale (SUS). Furthermore, the suitability of XMPP and the scalability and privacy of SSNs and the reference implementation are discussed.

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BibTeX

@mastersthesis{hanzl-2011,
  title =      "Spontaneous Social Networks",
  author =     "Michael Hanzl",
  year =       "2011",
  abstract =   "Social networks are a well researched field. There is
               extensive literature covering this topic. They are nowadays
               used for a wide variety of applications such as business,
               education, medicine and dating. These applications
               contribute to the high popularity of social networks. The
               underlying concept of all social networking applications is
               a graph, that consists of nodes representing people and
               edges representing social relations. This social graph is
               commonly very rigid in semantics and tedious to manipulate.
               Two users can add an edge only by mutually accepting the
               relation. Typically this graph manipulation needs manual
               intervention. In contrast, Spontaneous Social Networks
               (SSNs) rely on much more flexible graphs that are
               manipulated with minimal manual intervention. Edges are
               automatically generated and deleted in real time by hardware
               devices such as smartphones and desktop PCs. Applications
               operate on top of SSNs. The application defines the purpose
               and properties of the SSN and provides the users an
               interface to a SSN. The goal of this diploma thesis is the
               design of a standard and an implementation of a Spontaneous
               Social Networking (SSN) framework. The capabilities of the
               framework are demonstrated by a number of example
               applications. The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
               (XMPP) and the Publish-Subscribe (PubSub) paradigm are used
               for communication in SSNs. The properties and discovery
               approaches of SSNs are defined. The implementation is
               evaluated in terms of usability with the help of the System
               Usability Scale (SUS). Furthermore, the suitability of XMPP
               and the scalability and privacy of SSNs and the reference
               implementation are discussed.",
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
               University of Technology ",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2011/hanzl-2011/",
}