ubiquitous social networking: concept and evaluation

Aalborg Universitet

Ubiquitous Social Networking

Sapuppo, Antonio

Published in:Sensor Letters

Publication date:2012

Document VersionEarly version, also known as pre-print

Link to publication from Aalborg University

Citation for published version (APA):Sapuppo, A. (2012). Ubiquitous Social Networking: Concept and Evaluation. Sensor Letters, 10(8), 1632-1644.

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Sensor Letters, American Scientific Publishers, Vol. 10, No. 8, 2012 1632

Ubiquitous Social Networking: Concept andEvaluation

Antonio Sapuppo

Aalborg University,Center for Communication, Media and Information Technologies,Sydhavnsgade 17-19, Frederikskaj 12, Copenhagen 2450, DenmarkE-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: Despite the great success of online social networks, there is still no automatedway to facilitate communication between people in the physical environment. Ubiquitoussocial networking services target at transferring online social networking benefits tothe physical world, by facilitating advantageous relationships during physical meetingsbetween 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 byintegrating online social networks with opportunistic networks. This solution, called localsocial networks, focuses on uncovering relevant connections between people nearby, byproviding a platform for automatic exchange of user personal information in order todiscover interpersonal affinities. Firstly, we define and discuss the concept, advantages,preliminary architecture and potential future applications of local social networks as wellas introduce the first prototype, named Spiderweb. Afterwards, we present results of aqualitative investigation that researched whether 16 active online social networks userswould accept ubiquitous social networking services. The results revealed that all theparticipants perceived the usefulness of these services and 14 of them would be willing toaccept all the necessary requirements for the establishment of local social networks andconsequently be potential users.

Keywords: ubiquitous computing; social networking; privacy; information disclosure;mobile computing.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Sapuppo, A. (2012) ’UbiquitousSocial Networking: Concept and Evaluation’, Sensor Letters, Vol. 10, No. 8, pp.1632–1644,American Scientific Publishers.

1 Introduction

The creation of Internet provided an innovativecommunication infrastructure that reduced the distancebetween people living in different parts of the world.Soon on the basis of this technology new services havebeen developed, which improved the communicationbetween people. Such initiatives as Orkut1, MySpace2

and Facebook3, called online social networks (in thefollowing referred to as OSNs), share a commoncharacteristic: they enable people to create a virtualsocial network where users can stay in touch with friendsfrom the whole world, share pictures, talk, chat, sendmessages and look for new acquaintances (Counts andFisher, 2008; Ziv and Mulloth, 2007).

Despite the wide spread of OSNs, the flexibilityand sociability of these networks can be questioned.Firstly, the access to OSNs services is not available uponuser’s demand, as it occurs exclusively while using adesktop computer (Eagle and Pentland, 2005). Further,the human communication is still highly embedded in thephysical contact and closeness, provided by the physicalenvironment. Unfortunately, OSNs do not facilitate

social communication in the physical environment. Thus,people with shared interests and backgrounds fail toleverage interpersonal affinities for personal benefits(Eagle and Pentland, 2005; Pietilainen et al., 2009;Gupta et al., 2009).

Recently, the flexibility restriction of OSNs has beensolved by enabling the OSNs services on mobiles. Thereal advantage of mobile social networks, if comparedto classic OSNs, is that mobile terminals elevate thefreedom of movement while using the applications (Ranaet al., 2009). Moreover, mobiles are not seen only as entrypoints to existing centralized OSNs, but thanks to theirwireless technologies they also enable OpportunisticNetworks (in the following referred to as ONs). In ONs,nodes are wirelessly connected and have the possibilityto identify each other as well as exchange contentsin a short communication range (Heinemann, 2007;Persson and Jung, 2005; Ioannidis and Chaintreau,2009). When user personal information is incorporatedto ONs, these networks can be perceived as an importanttool for addressing sociability issues in the physicalworld, as they enable the establishment of ubiquitoussocial networking services (Delmastro et al., 2009; Eagle

Ubiquitous Social Networking: Concept and Evaluation 1633

and Pentland, 2005; Beale, 2005; Persson and Jung,2005; Tamarit et al., 2009).

Ubiquitous social networking services attempt toaddress sociability issues by providing a controlledautomated communication system, applied in everydayphysical world. These services help users to developpossible advantageous relationships such as friendships,partnerships, business relations by uncovering hiddenconnections that people share with others nearby andthus facilitating initialization of face-to-face interactions.As a result, the value of social networking is significantlyenhanced and benefits are available immediately upondemand (Eagle and Pentland, 2005; Gupta et al., 2009;Pietilainen et al., 2009; Tamarit et al., 2009).

In this paper, we present a potential solution for theestablishment of ubiquitous social networking services,called local social networks, which incorporates theusers’ personal information into ONs by integratingOSNs with ONs. Thanks to this integration, localsocial networks are capable of combining online andubiquitous social networking services and provide themto the users through a single platform. In order toanalyze the acceptance of local social networks, weran a qualitative investigation with 16 active onlinesocial networks users. Particularly, we researched theperceived usefulness of ubiquitous social networkingservices as well as participants’ acceptance of the crucialrequirements for the establishment of these services.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: inthe next section we describes and defines in details theconcept of local social networks, presents the preliminaryarchitecture, first prototype as well as suggestionsfor future potential applications of ubiquitous socialnetworking services. In Section 3, we review thebackground and design of the qualitative investigationand information about the participants. We presentresults of the conducted qualitative tests in Section 4.Final conclusions and recommendations for future workare drawn in the last section of the paper.

2 Local social networks

Local Social Networks (in the following referred to asLSNs) focus on promoting ubiquitous social networkingservices in order to facilitate face-to-face interactionsbetween people during physical meetings. This solutionattempts to address sociability issues by providing aplatform for automatic exchange of user profiles in orderto discover interpersonal affinities and consequentlycreate new beneficial relationships between users, whodo not know each other, but probably should.

In the following, firstly, we present an examplescenario, illustrating the ubiquitous social networkingprocess, followed by the definition and preliminaryarchitecture of LSNs. Further, we introduce the firstprototype and potential application areas of LSNs.

2.1 Example scenario

To better explain the LSN concept, we present anexample scenario of ubiquitous social networking servicesin Figure 1. A user named Bob, who is marked in blue,is located in a public place, such as a canteen of anordinary work place. Bob is surrounded by people thathe knows, marked in green, and people that are strangersto him, marked in white. Even if Bob does not interactwith all people in the canteen, his mobile phone does itfor him by exchanging personal information with otherLSNs peers in his proximity, as shown in Figure 2-A. Due

A

A BFigure 1 Ubiquitous Social Networking Example Scenario

to the exchange of personal information, LSNs developan understanding about who are the people nearby aswell as their respective preferences. Thus, these servicesare capable of highlighting relevant social paths betweenusers that would be hidden otherwise, as shown in Figure2-B. When LSNs find profile similarities between Boband other LSNs users, highlighted in yellow in Figure2-B, they are notified about each others’ presence and,therefore, have the opportunity to immediately initiatea face-to-face communication. However, in LSNs theexchange of personal information is automatic and itdoes not interfere with the current Bob’s activity. Therelevant information, which is useful for networking withother users, can be retrieved and used even at a latertime.

As it can be derived from above example scenario,when Bob is taking part in these networks, all theother LSNs peers become aware that he is somewherearound. Moreover, due to the exchange of users’ personalinformation, Bob is able to access others’ personaldata, as well as his data is revealed to the otherpeers of the network. Finally, as a result of immediatenotifications about relevant profile similarities, Bob caninitiate profitable conversations with the users, markedin yellow in Figure 2-B, and vice versa, i.e these usersmight decide to start a face-to-face interaction with Bob.Consequently, following this example scenario, we canidentify three crucial requirements for the establishmentof local social networks:

1634 Antonio Sapuppo

A

A BFigure 2 Ubiquitous Social Networking Example Scenario

• Announcement of users’ presence: users mustaccept to inform other nearby LSNs users abouttheir whereabouts;

• Disclosure of personal data: users must acceptto share their personal information whenencountering other LSNs users;

• Potential initiation of face-to-face interactions:users must accept possible immediate face-to-faceinteractions with other LSNs users, when notifiedabout potential profile similarities.

2.2 Definition

After introducing the LSNs concept, we concisely definelocal social networks as follows:

A local social network is a wireless networkof opportunistically connected sociable nodes

In other words, LSN is a distributed networkarchitecture in which nodes are linked to onlinesocial networks profiles and wirelessly interconnectedto exchange personalized contents. The communicationrange between the sociable nodes is direct and limitedto the walking distance.

2.3 Preliminary architecture

Figure 3 shows the preliminary architecture of localsocial networks, which is based on the integration ofOSNs with ONs. The left side of Figure 3 presentsthe OSN architecture that is following the classicalclient/server model. The server is connected to adatabase that contains all the information about theusers of the application: user profiles, messages, contactinvitations, relationships between the users, etc. Allthe other elements are an assortment of clients. Aclient is able to interact with the server by starting acommunication through an IP bearer technology. The

right side of Figure 3 presents the ON architecture, whichis based on the peer-to-peer wireless communication andconsequently does not present any central server.

The main difference between OSNs and ONs isevident: the range where social networks are established.Regarding OSNs, the amount of data is usually vastand therefore it may be difficult to find the neededinformation. In case of ONs the amount of datais restricted to the range of the wireless technologyadopted. This range has to be short enough to ensurethat users are in the proximity of each other. At thesame time it has to be long enough for users to scanwithout being noticed (Persson and Jung, 2005). Figure4-A shows the wireless range of the user, however inreality the communication range is not an ideal circledue to communication signal interferences with thesurroundings (Heinemann, 2007). Within the wirelessrange, users are able to instantly discover each other andexchange personal contents (e.g. profiles, messages, etc).When the device at the center of the circle discoversother users in its proximity, a direct connection betweenthese two users is possible, as shown in Figure 4-B. Onthe contrary, the device outside the wireless range isnot discovered and, consequently, these devices do notknow about each other’s existence and communication

Internet

Online

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Networks

Wireless

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Figure 3 Preliminary architecture of Local SocialNetworks


between them is not possible unless they move into eachothers’ wireless range.

Importantly, a LSNs node behaves as OSN node andON node at the same time, as illustrated in Figure3, where a node is placed in the intersection spacebetween the OSNs and ONs. The LSN node architectureis presented in Figure 5. The bottom layer of the LSNnode architecture manages the communication matters.While an IP Bearer technology can be used to accessOSN services, the Exchange Data communication is usedto enable direct communication in a short range of theselected wireless technology. The Node Discovery andEnvironment Discovery are adopted to define the currentsurroundings of the user, respectively information aboutother nodes in the user’s LSN and relevant context datato interpret current users’ location, activity, etc.

The second layer of LSN node architecture iscomposed of collection of services that can be offeredby LSNs, which are enabled through the bottomcommunication layer. They are a collection of OSNsservices (e.g. find new acquaintances, search for peopleon the basis of certain criteria, chat, view profile of otherusers, etc) and others, which promote sociability duringphysical meetings. Particularly, the latter services,such as Business Card Management and Exchangeservices, enable effective control and distribution ofpersonalized user profiles in the users’ vicinity. Moreover,the Similarity Evaluation services enable LSNs tocompare the user profiles, calculate the similarity scoresbetween the encountering users and consequently triggerthe Notification System services when needed. TheNotification System alerts users about the exchange ofpersonal information with others, who present relevantprofile similarities for networking.

The profile of the user is placed in the thirdarchitecture level of Figure 5, which is dividedinto ambiguous and unambiguous personal data. TheAmbiguous User Data represents a set of informationthat may be subject to continuous changes, such asuser preferences (e.g. food taste); the UnambiguousUser Data is related to a set of information, whichdoes not change often (e.g. home address) and thus itis considered to be of high sensitivity. Consequently,different strategies for preserving user’s privacy can be

A B

There is one user in my LSN

This is my Wireless range

Figure 4 The range of Local Social Networks

User Interface

OSN

Ambiguous User Data

IP Bearer Environment Discovery

NodeDiscovery

ExchangeData

BCMSELENS BCE ...

Unambiguous User Data

OSN = Online Social Networks servicesNS = Notification System servicesLE = Location Exchange services

...

SE = Similarity Evaluation servicesBCM = Business Card Management servicesBCE = Business Cards Exchange services

Figure 5 Local Social Networks node architecture

applied based on this data classification. Finally, theinterface is placed in the top level of the LSN nodearchitecture. The User Interface has access to all theother layers of the LSN node in order to accomplish itspurpose.

2.4 The Spiderweb prototype

The first LSN prototype is the Spiderweb mobile socialnetwork application (Sapuppo, 2010), which was selectedto be implemented in Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME)in order to be compatible with all mobile operatingsystems supporting J2ME (Hammershøj et al., 2010).The application follows the software architecture schemadescribed in Figure 3, thus Spiderweb integrates OSNswith ONs. Spiderweb partly relies on the Internetconnectivity and offers several services, already well-known from online social networks sites. In fact, usersare able to create their profiles and invite others to theirsocial networks. They are also able to search for peoplebased on certain filtering criteria, exchange messages,let other users know their current position and keep intouch with their friends. Additionally, Spiderweb usesBluetooth connectivity to allow devices to identify eachother and establish direct connections between themby using the short range communication. Within theBluetooth range, Spiderweb users share a subset of thefull user profile, called Business Card (in the followingreferred to as BC), which is stored in the local memoryof the device and is synchronized with the relevant fieldsof the OSN profile. Due to exchange of BCs, Spiderwebusers are capable of uncovering hidden connections thatthey share with other people nearby.

Two screenshots of the Spiderweb application areshown in Figure 6. On the right side of Figure 6 anexample of a BC is presented. The BC is composed ofpersonal information that is accepted by the Spiderwebusers to be shared with others in their proximity. Onthe left side of Figure 6, the notification screen ispresented. Notifications regard OSNs and ubiquitoussocial networking services. In relation to OSN services,users are notified when they change their current status,update their profiles or GPS positions as well as receivetext and picture messages from other users or establish


Figure 6 Two screenshots of Spiderweb

new friendships. Moreover, in respect to ubiquitoussocial networking services, the user is notified if otherswith specific characteristic that the user is looking for arein the proximity (e.g. likes rock music or is a friend in theOSN). From the notification screen, the user can accessboth OSN and ubiquitous social networking services,utilizing the icons on the bottom of the screen.

Even if Spiderweb is the first prototype of LSNs,many functionalities of LSNs preliminary architecture,presented in section 2.3, are not fully applied. Infact, some components and services related to theautomated creation of users’ BCs have not beenimplemented yet (e.g. Environment discovery, BusinessCard Management services, etc). Future implementationof these components and application of these servicesare of crucial importance for improving the Spiderwebapplication and contributing to the long-term success ofubiquitous social networking services.

2.5 Application areas

In the following we present several application areas,where LSNs services might significantly improve people’ssocial being and connectedness:

• Professional: Ubiquitous social networking servicesmight provide significant improvements to users’professional life. Firstly, they might lead tonew personal professional opportunities, such asconnecting employers with potential employeesand vice versa. Further, LSNs services wouldhelp to initiate collaborative teams withinorganizations. For example, they would assist inconnecting people who are working on similarmaterial as well as finding others who have abilitiesto solve another employee’s current problem (Eagleand Pentland, 2005).

• Dating: OSNs that focus on dating servicesbecame very common in the recent years. EvenFacebook, which is not primarily targeting atpromoting dating services, significantly increasedits popularity when it enabled users to discover therelation status of others. In comparison to these

OSNs, LSNs would definitely provide a new way tofacilitate such kind of services between the users. Infact, ubiquitous social networking services wouldnot be limited to desktop applications, but theywould help to connect nearby users with similarsocial interests and thus provide opportunities toimmediately initiate potential face-to-face socialinteractions in their everyday lives (Beale, 2005).

• Events: LSNs might also present significantpotential in various events, such as conferences,company events, exhibitions, etc. These situationsusually comprise large amounts of participants,who potentially share similar professional orsocial interests. However, due to time limitations,people do not have enough time to networkwith all the participants and thus fail to exploitpotential networking benefits. As an example,many professional networking connections could beestablished during large academic conferences withthe help of LSNs that would take into accountsimilar research interests (Pietilainen et al., 2009;Eagle and Pentland, 2005).

3 Investigation methodology and design

In this section we present the methodology anddesign of a qualitative investigation that aims atanalyzing the acceptance of ubiquitous social networkingservices among active online social networks users. Ourinvestigation aims at answering the following question:

Would participants accept ubiquitous socialnetworking services?

In order to answer this question, we considered toapply the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) thatcomprises analysis of perceived ease of use and usefulnessof the application (Davis, 1989). The perceived ease ofuse was already investigated in regard to the Spiderweblocal social networks application. The results of theinvestigation were very satisfactory, as the 70% of theparticipants found Spiderweb to be ”very easy to use”.This indicated that Spiderweb users would not requiremuch effort to become skillful in using the application(Sapuppo, 2010). Consequently, in this qualitativeinvestigation, we focus the attention on analyzing theperceived usefulness of ubiquitous social networkingservices. Moreover, in order to get more insight into theparticipants’ acceptance of ubiquitous social networkingservices, other factors must be taken into consideration.We refer to investigation of participants’ acceptance ofall the necessary prerequisites for the establishment ofLSNs, presented in the example scenario in Section 2.1.

In the following, we describe the background anddesign of the qualitative investigation, followed by theinformation about the participants.


3.1 Background

A qualitative investigation was conducted for evaluatingthe acceptance of ubiquitous social networking services.Qualitative interviews were preferred alternatively toother investigation methods, such as handing outquestionnaires or establishing a focus group interview.This method was chosen because of the followingtwo reasons: (i) participants’ unfamiliarity with theubiquitous social networking subject and (ii) potentialmisinterpretation of the research questions due to theircomplexity and ambiguity. Moreover, we decided torun semi-structured interviews to better understand themotivation behind the participants responses and ensurethat general areas of information are collected fromeach participant, however still allowing adaptability ofthe interview process (McNamara, 1999; Creswell, 2009;Kvale, 2004).

In order to help participants to get more familiarwith the ubiquitous social networking concept, firstly, wepresented different scenarios from everyday lives, wherethese services might be applied. Secondly, we introducedall the available Spiderweb services, which are presentedin (Sapuppo, 2010) as well as in this video4, anddiscussed with participants potential networking benefitsand threats. Lastly, participants had an opportunity toutilize a mobile application that simulates the LSNsbehavior for 11 days. At least 3 times per day, themobile application was randomly asking the participantsto upload their personal data disclosure decisions for thespecific circumstances, encountered at the moment ofthe request. The selection of data types to be disclosedwas provided in accordance to data categorization inpopular OSNs sites (e.g. gender, age, favorite music,etc.). This categorization was already used in a previousinvestigation about disclosure of personal informationin ubiquitous social computing environments and thedetailed description of the provided data types canbe found in (Sapuppo and Seet, 2012). Participantswere aware that potential networking benefits wouldbe directly proportional to the amount of sharedinformation, thus their ad hoc data disclosure decisionswere representing a compromise between privacy risksand potential networking benefits.

Notably, we preferred to provide a new mobileapplication, designed specifically for this investigation,rather than utilizing the Spiderweb or other existingubiquitous social networking applications, such as (Eagleand Pentland, 2005; Persson and Jung, 2005; Beale,2005; Tamarit et al., 2009), because these applicationsare still not widely spread yet and participants wouldencounter difficulties in finding opportunities to disclosetheir personal information to real users. Afterwards,we interviewed the participants for a duration of 30-45 minutes. The interviews were audio taped andtranscribed at later time. Questions were, firstly,related to perceived usefulness of ubiquitous socialnetworking services, which investigated the degree towhich participants believe that using a particular

technology would enhance their networking performance(Davis, 1989). Further, we analyzed the acceptance ofthe three crucial prerequisites for the establishment ofubiquitous social networking services, derived from theexample scenario in Section 2.1, i.e. announcement ofuser’s presence, disclosure of personal information andpotential initiation of face-to-face interactions.

3.2 Participants

The selection of participants was limited to OSNsusers. We determined this category to be the mostrelevant because of their advanced experience insocial networking, even if the perception towards thenetworking services might vary between virtual andphysical worlds.

Respondents were asked to provide information abouttheir demographic characteristics and asked to indicatetheir privacy preferences on visibility of their ownpersonal data (e.g. user profile, pictures, posts) in theirmain OSN site. Based on these answers, we were ableto observe patterns among data disclosure attitudesand divide the participants into three privacy clusters,following the Westin/Harris privacy segmentation model(Westin, 1991):

• Fundamentalists: these respondents wereextremely concerned about sharing their personaldata with any other online social networks users(friends or strangers);

• Pragmatists: these participants also cared aboutloss of privacy due to the disclosure of theirpersonal information. However, they often hadspecific concerns and particular strategies foraddressing them. For example, this category ofrespondents generally preferred sharing personalinformation only among their friends;

• Unconcerned: these respondents were trustingonline social networks sites and believing that theprivacy of their data was not jeopardized. Thus,they were willing to share their personal data notonly with people who were their friends, but as wellwith users who were complete strangers to them.

In total we recruited 16 participants with thefollowing privacy and demographic characteristics:

• Gender: 10 of the participants were male, while 6of them were females;

• Age: 7 of the respondents were younger than 26years, 7 of them were between 26 and 35 years oldand 2 participants were older than 35 years;

• Occupation: 8 of the participants were working and8 of them were studying at the time of the survey;

• Privacy: 9 of the respondents were pragmatists, 4of them were fundamentalists and 3 participantswere unconcerned.


4 Investigation results

In this section we present results of the qualitativeinvestigation that analyzes participants’ acceptance ofubiquitous social networking. As introduced in Section3, we firstly focus on researching perceived usefulnessof LSNs services. Afterwards, we investigated theparticipants’ acceptance of the crucial prerequisites forthe establishment of ubiquitous social networking.

4.1 Perceived usefulness

The qualitative interviews were firstly attempting to getinsight into perceived usefulness of LSNs by focusing onthe following subquestions and motivations supportingcorresponding participants’ answers:

1. Would respondents perceive that ubiquitoussocial networking services improve their everydaycommunication?

2. For what purposes would the participants perceivethe ubiquitous social networking services to beuseful?

Firstly, as shown in Figure 7, all the participantsacknowledged the potential of LSNs services forimproving their everyday communication, because theybelieved that these services would help them to connectwith other people nearby, who have similar socialand professional interests and goals. Furthermore, theparticipants considered that LSNs services relevantlysupport ordinary human interactions and behavior thatpeople usually maintain in their everyday lives. Some ofthe respondents highlighted that these services would bevery useful for people with any distinctive interests, asone of them said:

”Many teenagers wear t-shirts representingtheir favorite music (e.g. metal, rock, etc).The reason why they do so is to attract theattention of other people with the same musicpreference in their surroundings. Now thinkabout having a complex interest - how can yourepresent it in a t-shirt? In such cases LSNswould be really helpful”

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Figure 7 Perceived usefulness of ubiquitous socialnetworking services

Secondly, as illustrated in Figure 7, potentialprofessional networking benefits, received in exchangeto disclosure of personal information, were notablyconsidered to be the best motivation for using LSNsservices by 15 out of 16 respondents. They indicated thatLSNs would improve their professional lives, becausesuch services were considered to be relevant to speedup the process of initiating beneficial professionalrelationships. For instance, a participant, who was justback from a big exhibition in London, claimed thatthese services would significantly increase the networkingefficiency of that exhibition:

”Companies were presenting us what theywere working on and invited to submit ourcurriculum vitae. However, the exhibitionwas very big and many companies wereparticipating, thus I did not manage to getinformed about all the job opportunities andI could not network with the representativesof all the companies. I believe that I lostrelevant professional opportunities. In suchsituations, those services would significantlyimprove my networking by highlighting whichcompanies are worth to interact with and topresent my curriculum vitae”

While the majority of the respondents found LSNsservices to be very useful in regard to professional life,some of them (i.e. 7 out of 16) seemed to be cautiouswhen considering to share their personal informationfor improving their social relations, as shown in Figure7. These participants found social interactions to bemore sensitive compared to professional ones and theywere skeptical about sharing their social life with otherpeople whom they do not know. However, some of thembelieved that they might start using LSNs also for socialpurposes after developing an initial familiarity withthese services. However, despite their overall carefulness,one of respondents emphasized circumstances where hewould be interested in using LSNs also for improving hissocial interactions:

”Last summer, I visited Los Angeles with myfriends. I believe that such services wouldhave been very useful in many circumstancesduring my holiday, as we spent a lot of timein different social environments and we werein the right mood for starting new socialinteractions with people around us”

4.2 Acceptance of prerequisites

When inquired about the acceptance of ubiquitous socialnetworking prerequisites, only a few of the participantshad serious concerns about accepting all the neededrequirements for the establishment of these services.In the following subsections, we present the individualresults in relation to acceptance of the three identifiedprerequisites.


Announcement of users’ presence

In order to enable the LSNs users to announce theirpresence to the others, two main concepts are relevantto be considered: sharing of location information andproximity information. Both of them are related tosharing of the user’s current position. However, thelocation information is generally intended to be sharedamong acquaintances and in an unlimited range, whileproximity information is meant to be disclosed to onlyall people nearby.

Sharing of the location information is one of the maincharacteristics of mobile social networks, which enableslocation based services. Generally, these services helpusers to connect to friends, be alerted when they areclose and discover places around them by sharing users’GPS positions (Ziv and Mulloth, 2007). However, mobilesocial networks users have presented serious privacyconcerns, related to disclosure of location information,even if it is applied only among acquaintances (Chen andRahman, 2008). Sharing of the proximity information,instead, presents added value for solving privacy issues,related to disclosure of location information, becauseLSNs users are exclusively discovered within the range ofthe adopted wireless technology, as shown in Figure 4. Infact, LSN users are notified about the presence of othersonly when they are in the vicinity. Once the people moveaway, the information about the users’ presence is notavailable anymore, unless they re-enter into each other’swireless range. As a result, the privacy threats, relatedto disclosure of current position, are decreased and theapplication of this concept might lead to positive trade-off between potential benefits and threats.

In relation to ubiquitous social networking, whileaccepting to share the proximity information isconsidered to be a mandatory requirement forparticipation in LSNs, disclosure of location informationis an optional feature to access a wider range of services.For example, Spiderweb users can disclose both locationand proximity information. However, they can switch thelocation disclosure feature off at any time, and still beable to exploit ubiquitous social networking services bysharing their proximity information.

In order to gain insight into participants’ willingnessto share their current position, firstly, we asked themwhether they would like to disclose their locationinformation and afterwards we also investigated thewillingness to share the proximity information. As shownin Figure 8, the majority of respondents (i.e. 10 out of16) preferred to maintain their current location privateand provided comments, similar to the following:

”Location is very sensitive information. I donot think it is important for other people toknow where I am. Even in case of peoplewhom I know very well, I still would notdisclose the exact address of my position,but I might disclose less detailed information,such as country or city where I am now”

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Figure 8 Acceptance of announcement of user’s presence

However, the rest of the participants (i.e. 6 out of16) accepted to share their location information becausethey could perceived several advantages of this feature.For example, one of them claimed:

”Two years ago I would probably tell youthat I would never share my current location,but now I have started using location basedservices, such as Google Latitude5, and Ireally enjoy the benefits of these services. Myfriends can see where I am and join me whenthey are not far away”

After discussing the willingness to share the locationinformation, we further inquired respondents whetherthey would allow the disclosure of proximity information.As shown in Figure 8, all the participants were verypositive about this new concept and would permitthe disclosure of their proximity information withoutany concerns. They acknowledged the advantages ofannouncing their presence only to people nearby oversharing of their location information. It could beassumed that this preference is motivated by theperception that disclosure of proximity information doesnot lead to invasion of privacy, as many participantsprovided comments, similar to the following:

”I think that disclosure of proximityinformation is a very good idea. In this case,I would not mind to announce my presenceto exclusively people nearby, because if theylook around, they can just see me anyway”

Furthermore, some of the respondents indicated thatthey would prefer disclosure of proximity informationover location information, because the latter comprisesunnecessary sharing of user’s current position to thirdparties. These participants claimed that they would notutilize such services, if they had to disclose their currentposition to third parties, because they were worriedabout losing control over this sensitive personal data.

Disclosure of personal data

Sharing of personal information, such as user’spreferences and contact information, is indisputablythe crucial foundation of ubiquitous social networking


services. Thus, we asked participants whether theyhad any concerns about disclosure of their personalinformation to other nearby users, who would bestrangers for them.

As a result, all the participants accepted to disclosetheir personal information in order to gain potentialnetworking benefits in exchange. Many of them discussedthat disclosing their personal information throughubiquitous social networking services would not bemuch different from having face-to-face interactions withstrangers themselves, which as well comprise sharingof personal data. Furthermore, the majority of theparticipants also emphasized that they would feel moremotivated to share personal information, if LSNs ensuredthat the data sharing occurred only for specific purposes,as one of them noted:

”I would definitely disclose very detailedinformation about my work activities if Iperceived potential for getting a better job”

Furthermore, participants discussed that they wouldappreciate that LSNs services would empower their usersto always keep control over their personal data, evenafter actual disclosure, as it would increase perceivedtrust and provide better usability of such services. Manyof the participants provided comments, similar to thefollowing:

”If I had met a potential employer, I wouldlike to make sure that this person gotall the information about my career skills,abilities and expectations. Thus, I wouldappreciate a possibility to additionally sharethis information, if it was not disclosedduring the initial data disclosure”

Also, one of the participants, who seemed to be stronglyinfluenced by the public opinion, discussed how keepingcontrol over his shared data would allow him to disclosenewly discovered personal preferences, without beingworried about future social implications:

”If I added to my business card that I ama fan of a famous runner, but at later timeit would be discovered that this person wasnot honest in his sport achievements andthus lose his good public image, I woulddefinitely be very embarrassed to keep him inmy profile. The same would apply for otherpersonal preferences, such as new movies orbooks, which are subjects to public opinion. Iwould not disclose such preferences, if I didnot have the opportunity to modify them atlater time”

Finally, we inquired participants about three differentmethods for sharing of users’ preferences in LSNs andasked them to choose their preferred approach. The threeproposed solutions are following described:

1. Static profile: this solution discloses the sameprofile in all the encountered circumstances. Itis a well-known approach, already utilized in themajority of existing ubiquitous social networkingapplications, such as (Eagle and Pentland, 2005;Persson and Jung, 2005; Beale, 2005; Tamaritet al., 2009);

2. Predefined privacy preferences: this solutionattempts to predict all the potential situations andassociated data sharing decisions a priori to theactual data disclosure. This approach was alreadyadopted in (Lederer et al., 2003b; Kapadia et al.,2007; Jendricke et al., 2002; Myles et al., 2003;Smailagic and Kogan, 2002);

3. Ad hoc privacy control: this solution providesopportunities to take data sharing decisions in situ- at the moment of actual disclosure. This approachautomatically manages information disclosure onthe users’ behalf in order to relieve them fromfrequent data disclosure decisions (Jendricke et al.,2002; Bunnig, 2009b; Bunnig and Cap, 2009).

After introducing to the participants differentscenarios, based on the first two approaches (i.e.sharing of a static profile and predefined privacypreferences), we showed them results of a simulationof ad hoc privacy control mechanism, which takes intoaccount both previous data disclosure decisions andrelevant influential factors (e.g. location, activity, mood,mutual friends) that were proven to impact users’data disclosure decisions (Sapuppo, 2012; Consolvoet al., 2005; Sapuppo, 2013; Lederer et al., 2003a). Foreach participant, we presented his/her correspondingprediction result, obtained by processing his/her datadisclosure decisions, collected while using the LSNprototype. Specifically, we applied the binary logisticregression statistical model and achieved an approximateaccuracy of 90%, with peaks of 93%, and potential forfurther increasing performance.

As shown in Figure 9, the majority of the participants(i.e. 14 out of 16) would trust ad hoc privacy control,as they highlighted the advantages of this solutionover other techniques, i.e. sharing of a static profileand predefined sharing preferences, to manage their

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2 Ad hoc privacycontrol

Predefined privacypreferences

Static profile

Figure 9 Acceptance of mechanisms for disclosure ofuser’s personal information


data disclosure. Firstly, the participants indicated thatthey preferred sharing different profiles under differentcircumstances, e.g. they did not want to share datarelated to private activities in work environments.Secondly, the participants claimed that it would bedifficult for them to define in advance what to discloseper each circumstance and they expected to encountersituations where data disclosure decisions would not beaccurately predictable in advance.

Moreover, respondents were confident that byutilizing automated ad hoc privacy control, LSNs wouldbe capable of managing their personal data disclosuredecisions in accordance to the real users’ data disclosurepreferences. In fact, after running the provided mobileapplication for a few days, participants experiencedthat they were already using a pattern on what todisclose in similar circumstances. Also, they did notexpress particular concerns about potential wrong datadisclosure decision taken by LSNs. In case of unintendeddisclosure of not sensitive personal data, they discussedthat many times they did not share some of theirpersonal information, because they did not find anyreasons for disclosing it, rather than for preserving theirprivacy. In these cases, the disagreement of data sharingdecisions between the participants and ad hoc privacycontrol would only arise due to different evaluation ofrelevance, rather than data sensitivity for the currentcircumstances.

In case of inquiry for highly sensitive data, despite thegood prediction results of the binary logistic regressionmodel, some respondents (i.e. 4) would prefer to limit theautonomy of ad hoc privacy control. These participantsprovided comments similar to the following:

”In the majority of the cases I would haveno concerns about allowing LSNs to managemy personal information. However theremight be either highly sensitive personal data(e.g. religion) or some specific circumstancesthat are very important to me (e.g. I amattending a job interview) in which I wouldfeel uncomfortable to allow a machine to takedecisions on my behalf. In such situations,if possible, I would rather prefer to managethe disclosure of my personal informationmyself”

These results confirm the findings of previous studies,which as well investigated prediction of users’information disclosure, based on previous data disclosuredecisions, utilizing data mining algorithms (Bunnig,2009a, 2008; Bunnig and Cap, 2009). Even if presentingsignificant prediction results, Bunning et al claimed thatautomated data disclosure should limit its autonomyin case of inquiry for highly sensitive data. In suchsituations, it was advised to provide only suggesteddata disclosure choices, while waiting for user’s approvalbefore any actual disclosure (Bunnig, 2009a).

Potential initiation of face-to-face interactions

The last prerequisite for the establishment of ubiquitoussocial networking services that we analyzed in ourqualitative investigation is potential initiation of face-to-face interactions. This requirement is directly dependenton another relevant, however not crucial, prerequisite:immediate notifications. In fact, notifying about thepresence of other nearby LSNs users with relevant profilesimilarities provide the possibility to initiate immediateface-to-face interactions. Thus, before investigatingparticipants’ acceptance of potential face-to-faceinteractions, we firstly analyzed whether participantswould prefer to receive immediate notifications overthe possibility to retrieve the information, relevant fornetworking, at later time. We believe that participantshad enough insight for answering this question, becauseof the experience gained when running the providedmobile application, simulating the LSN behavior. Infact, the respondents were alerted by the applicationat least 3 times per day, which can be considered as arealistic replication of LSNs notification system.

As shown in Figure 10, only 4 out of 16respondents preferred to access the collected informationat later time. They emphasized that in manycircumstances, when they received the notification fromthe provided mobile application, they would havepreferred to postpone their attention for later time,as they did not want to be frequently interrupted.Following these considerations, relevant challenges forthe implementation of the notification system wereraised, as very frequent alerts might encourage usersto ignore notifications or even disable such feature.Firstly, the design of LSNs should drive users to providedetailed information in their profiles, in order to optimizediscovery of profile similarities and thus avoid toofrequent notifications. For example, liking sport wouldnot be the same as stating to be a fan of hockey. Secondly,the participants discussed that the design of LSNs shouldenable prioritization of users’ profile similarities, as oneof them claimed:

”I would definitely consider to utilize thenotification system if I was able to decidewhat to be alerted about. For instance, IfI was unemployed, I would prefer to bealerted only about professional networkingpossibilities and to retrieve information aboutother types of profile similarities at latertime”

Moreover, some of the respondents, as wellacknowledged additional advantages of accessing thecollected information about profile similarities withother users and thus they would like to have thisfeature as a supplement for the notification system.Firstly, for important matters, participants discussedthat they might need time to think and prepare beforeinitiating a face-to-face interaction. In fact, they wouldprefer to contact the person via email, before having a


conversation. Secondly, in case of lack of time for animmediate face-to-face interaction, such option wouldstill allow to access networking benefits, as one of therespondents noted:

”Many times I write down phone numbersof people that I meet at work or socialenvironments, but I rarely contact them,because after few days I forget the reasonfor having these numbers. LSNs wouldgive me the opportunity to retrieve therelevant personal information, related tothe phone numbers. Consequently, I wouldprobably initiate a communication with them,as I would also know the motivation forcontacting these people”

On the other hand, even if acknowledging that storingusers’ business cards might provide relevant advantagesfor ubiquitous social networking, the majority of theparticipants, i.e. 12 out of 16, would prefer to beimmediately notified when potential networking benefitsarose, as shown in Figure 10. They believed thatimmediate notifications is a crucial feature for ubiquitoussocial networking, because if the moment of interactingwith other people is delayed, it loses the importanceand interest to them. Participants also emphasized thatthey might not find the time for checking the collectedinformation and contacting those people afterwards.Furthermore, they discussed that the benefits ofubiquitous social networking over online social networksarise due to application of the notification system inLSNs. In fact, many of them provided comments, similarto the following:

“Without the notification system, LSNsservices would not be so different fromclassical online social networks in which abarrier is always placed between people whocommunicate. When notified, I can sociallyinteract without any barrier, because what Ineed is just there”

While being notified is an important, but notmandatory prerequisite, potential initiation of face-to-

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Figure 10 Acceptance of immediate notifications aboutprofile similarities and potential face-to-faceinteractions

face interactions is a requirement that users must acceptwhen utilizing ubiquitous social networking services.Even if the users prefer to retrieve the collectedrelevant business cards at later time, they cannot avoidthe possibility that another user would prefer to beimmediately notified and, consequently, would attemptto initiate a face-to-face interaction. As potential face-to-face interactions are unavoidable in ubiquitous socialnetworking services, during our qualitative interviews,we investigated the willingness of participants to acceptthis requirement. As shown in Figure 10, the majorityof the participants, i.e. 14 out of 16, would accept suchprerequisite as long as they had a coarse-grained controlover the ubiquitous social networking services:

”I do not see a reason for not acceptingto be approached by other LSNs users, ashaving potential face-to-face interactions isthe motivation for using such services. But,it is crucial for me to have full control overthese services and be able to switch them offwhen desired”

However, a few respondents, i.e. 2 out of 16, claimedthat they would not be potential users of LSNs ifthey had to accept such prerequisite, because they weretoo much concerned about potential undesired face-to-face interactions. These participants were worriedthat someone would unnecessarily disturb them, justbecause of the information that they had shared. Theserespondents claimed that they would utilize ubiquitoussocial networking only if these services enabled aninvisible mode option and disclose their information afteruser’s approval, which implied manual evaluations ofthe trade-offs between potential networking benefits andprivacy risks. However, such evaluation of trade-offs inUSN would present increased complexity and require toomuch user’s attention and intervention. Application ofan invisible mode option should be carefully consideredin the development of ubiquitous social networking, as itmight not lead to a calm USN technology, where userscould effortlessly exploit these services.

5 Conclusions

In this paper we presented a new communicationsystem, called local social networks, as a potentialsolution for the establishment of ubiquitous socialnetworking services. These services aim at uncoveringhidden connections between people in order toleverage interpersonal affinities for networking benefitsduring physical meetings. We described in detailsthe concept and the preliminary architecture of localsocial networks, which is based on the integrationof online social networks and opportunistic networks.Moreover, we introduced the first prototype, calledSpiderweb, and potential future application areas oflocal social networks, i.e. professional, dating andevents. Afterwards, we presented results of a qualitative


investigation that focused on understanding whetheractive online social networks users would acceptubiquitous social networking services. None of theparticipants were using ubiquitous social networkingservices at the time of the survey and 14 out of 16of them claimed that they would be potential users oflocal social networks. They appreciated the possibilityto be connected with other people and especiallywith those who share distinctive interests and goals.Participants indicated professional and events as themost relevant potential application areas for ubiquitoussocial networking services, however they would probablyneed time to get used to these services before theywould also utilize them for facilitating as well their socialinteractions.

Moreover, we noticed that the participants, whopreferred not to utilize ubiquitous social networkingservices, were younger than 26 years old and studyingat the time of the investigation. It could be expectedthat these participants did not perceive any potentialnetworking benefits in professional life because theyhad not started one yet. In regard to social life,they were concerned about accepting one of the threeprerequisites for the establishment of ubiquitous socialnetworking services, i.e. potential initiation of face-to-face interactions. Specifically, they were worried thattheir data disclosure would lead to unpleasant andundesired face-to-face interactions. However, all theother respondents acknowledged the usefulness of beingimmediately notified about discovered profile similaritieswith other nearby users and accepted the possibility toinitiate a beneficial face-to-face interaction with themas long as they had coarse grained control over theseservices. Finally, we did not observe any crucial concernsabout the other two prerequisites for the establishment ofubiquitous social networking services, i.e. announcementof users’ presence and disclosure of personal data.

While the majority of respondents had seriousconcerns about accepting to disclose their locationinformation, all of them accepted to announce theirpresence to all other nearby users by disclosing theirproximity information. Respondents also appreciated thepossibility to utilize automated ad hoc privacy control,which would relieve them from frequent data disclosuredecisions. However, in case of highly sensitive personalinformation or specific circumstances (e.g. attending ajob interview), a few users preferred to confirm LSNsdata disclosure decisions before any actual disclosure.Moreover, they also indicated that ad hoc privacy controlshould provide possibilities to modify their personaldata, even after actual disclosure, in order to increaseperceived trust and provide better usability of LSNs.

The results of this qualitative investigation drawthe attention to relevant development areas forensuring the long-term success of ubiquitous socialnetworking services. Firstly, further research isencouraged on variation of human data sensitivityunder different circumstances in order to minimizewrong data disclosure decisions that would lead to

potential unpleasant face-to-face interactions, as aresult of ubiquitous social networking services. Secondly,additional insight into creation of more trustable andfunctional ubiquitous social networking is needed inorder to provide opportunities for the users to effortlesslyexploit ubiquitous social networking services, while stillremaining in control of data disclosure when desired.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Nokia and developed asa part of the Converged Advanced Mobile MediaPlatforms (CAMMP) project6, funded by the DanishAdvanced Technology Foundation. The author isextremely grateful to the participants of the qualitativeinvestigation who took the time to take part in thisstudy. Without their participation and feedback, thiswork would not have been possible.

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Note

1http://www.orkut.com2http://www.myspace.com3http://www.facebook.com4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgeVNv10CIM5https://www.google.com/latitude6http://www.cammp.dk

ubiquitous social networking: concept and evaluation

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