# SoReC: A Social-Relation Based Centrality Measure in Mobile Social Networks

## TL;DR

This paper introduces SoReC, a social-relation based centrality measure for mobile social networks, leveraging direct and indirect social relations to identify influential users in dynamic environments.

## Contribution

It proposes a novel centrality measure using social network information to evaluate user influence in MSNs, considering both direct and indirect social relations.

## Key findings

- SoReC effectively identifies influential users in real-world MSNs.
- The measure outperforms existing centrality metrics in dynamic settings.
- Simulations demonstrate accurate prediction of future influential users.

## Abstract

Mobile Social Networks (MSNs) have been evolving and enabling various fields in recent years. Recent advances in mobile edge computing, caching, and device-to-device communications, can have significant impacts on 5G systems. In those settings, identifying central users is crucial. It can provide important insights into designing and deploying diverse services and applications. However, it is challenging to evaluate the centrality of nodes in MSNs with dynamic environments. In this paper, we propose a Social-Relation based Centrality (SoReC) measure, in which social network information is used to quantify the influence of each user in MSNs. We first introduce a new metric to estimate direct social relations among users via direct contacts, and then extend the metric to explore indirect social relations among users bridging by the third parties. Based on direct and indirect social relations, we detect the influence spheres of users and quantify their influence in the networks. Simulations on real-world networks show that the proposed measure can perform well in identifying future influential users in MSNs.