Workshop on Online Social Networks

Microsoft Research CambridgeDecember 7, 2007

Thank you for participating!

Why this workshop?

• Goals:– Discuss interesting future research directions– Identify challenges and implications for network

and distributed systems design

• Format:– Highly interactive encouraging discussions– More questions than answers!

Real life…

...and the networking community

Network geometry and design, Inference of network properties, Multihoming and overlays, Wireless, Secure networks, Troubleshooting, Congestion control, Router design, DNS

Multicast and Anycast, Control mechanisms, WWW, Performance analysis, Routing, TCP, Tracing and Measurement, Header Processing

Enterprise networks, Network Applications, System design, Incentives, Routing, Architectures, Reliability, Attack protection, Resource allocation, Wireless, Network characteristics

Research on social networks• Inter-disciplinary – Sociology– Economics– Information retrieval– Data mining

• Venues– ACM: KDD, SIGIR, SiGMOD, SIGCHI, EC– WWW– ...

• Why not addressed by the networking community?

Social networking services

Social networks and “networking”

• Social networks is “networking”• Connected components, interacting nodes, etc.

• Related topics have been studied under different settings...• P2P networks• Information dissemination• Epidemics

• Social networks:• Rely on human intensions...

Social networking services

Source: Bebo, Social Media – ‘getting your message across’

Social networking services• Social communities

– Bebo, MySpace, Facebook, etc.• Content sharing

– YouTube, Flickr, MSN Soapbox, etc.• Corporate

– LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc.• Portals

– MSN, Yahoo 360, etc.• Recommendation engines

– Last.fm, StumbleUpon, Digg, Me.dium, etc.• Bookmarking/Tagging

– Del.icio.us , CiteUlike, Furl, etc.• Discussion groups

– Blogs, forums, chat, messaging, Live QnA, etc.• Mobile social networks

– Vipera, Nokia “MOSH”, etc.• Virtual worlds

– Second life

What do social networks enable?

Leveraging the “community” in traditional applications

• Content/information sharing• Search• Information management• Recommendations• Advertisements

Research topics of interest• Identification of communities and their evolution in time

• Measurement and analysis of online communities• Social media analysis: blogs and friendship networks

• Recommendation / collaborative filtering systems• Rating, review, reputation, and trust systems• Expertise / interest tracking

• Information sharing and forwarding• Search strategies in social networks• Viral marketing strategies

• Implications on network and distributed systems design• System design for social networks• Mobile social networks

• Privacy and anonymity

Projects on information search, filtering, sharing, services

Albatross

• Information services leveraging mobile device contactsTagBooster

• Ranking and suggesting popular items

Systems and Networking group http://research.microsoft.com/camsys/

ALBATROSSOpportunistic Communication Services

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Information services leveraging opportunistic communications between human-carried mobile devices.

Ad-hoc/distributed community-based services with limited or no infrastructure

Related projects:Delay Tolerant Networking Haggle

TagBoosterSystem for ranking and suggesting popular items

apollonasaspaceflickrphotos

Item suggestions

nasapicturesapollomoon

user selection

App scenarios:• Social tagging

(videos, photos, bookmarks)• Search query popularity

Goals:• Learn true popularity ranking

(unbiased by suggestions)• Suggest true popular items• Identify true popular items quickly

Workshop Program

Workshop Program

Workshop Program

Workshop on Online Social Networks at SIGCOMM 2008

• CFP out soon!

• 6-page papers

• Paper deadline– Mid March 2008

Why this workshop?

• Goals:– Discuss interesting future research directions– Identify challenges and implications for network

and distributed systems design

• Format:– Highly interactive encouraging discussions– More questions than answers!