Design issues for distributed mobile social networks

TL;DR

This paper discusses key design challenges in creating distributed mobile social networks, focusing on architecture, technology, and tools to support user-context integration and service development.

Contribution

It identifies critical factors and challenges in designing distributed mobile social networks, highlighting architectural, technological, and tool-related considerations.

Findings

Key challenges in system architecture and technology

Importance of user-context modeling and source integration

Discussion of design factors for mobile social networks

Abstract

Social networks and their applications have become extremely popular during the last years, mostly targeting users via the web. However, it has been recently observed an interest to offer social network services to mobile users. Telecom operators attempt to integrate existing social networks to their systems or develop new ones, in order to offer new services to their subscribers. Subsequently, emphasis is given to the user-context modeling, as well as to the integration of sources that leads to the summarized collection of information anchored to the user; such as its location or its mobile device type, etc. In this paper we discuss the most important factors and challenges encountered during the design of such a system on architectural, technological and tool level.