Experiments in Mobile Social Networking

Number: CR-PRL-2008-02-0003Date: February 7th 2008Abstract: In this report we consider a mobile ad hoc network settingwhere users of Bluetooth enabled devices meet and communicate op-portunistically as when random people meet in a cafe, or researchersmeet at a conference. Ad hoc opportunistic contacts are built on thebasis of pre-defined relationships in online social networks. Our ap-proach distinguishes itself from previous work in the area by threecharacteristics: the removal of a need for a central server to conductexchanges, the focus on the transitive closure of relationships, andthe use of existing social networks as a reference point for under-standing whether an exchange is desirable. We design MobiClique,a social interaction communication software package that we imple-ment on smartphones. We develop three applications: ad hoc socialconnections, epidemic newsgroups and asynchronous messaging. Wedescribe our experience with 28 users at a networking conference. Wediscover that despite the usual experimental hazards, MobiClique wassuccessful at building a local social network and delivering more than300 user generated messages over 3 days through multi-hop epidemiccommunication.