Linking people through physical proximity in a conference

Past research has studied offline proximity such as co-location and online social connections such as friendship individually. People form social relationships based on certain characteristics they possess, called social selection. When people change their social behavior due to interaction with others, social influence is at work. However, few researchers have examined the relationship that exists between offline proximity and online social connection, and the transitions from offline to online and vice versa (O2O). To study this problem, we created a system for finding and connecting with people at a conference that uses offline proximity encounters in order to help attendees meet and connect with each other. Using data where our system was deployed at two conferences, we discover that for social selection, more proximity interactions will result in an increased probability for a person to add another as a social connection (friend, follower or exchanged contact). However, after the social connections are established, more online social interactions result in a decreased duration and frequency of offline interactions between the connected users and social influence is weak. These results are just the first step in understanding how O2O interactions can help link people together, improve friend recommendations, and improve overall user experience.