I-Corps: Dynamic Social Networks: From Research to Marketplace

动态社交网络有可能彻底改变社交网络的使用方式。基于事件/上下文的社交网络不仅可以用来与朋友联系，分享图片和视频等内容，还可以用于商业环境，如企业、教育、培训、农业和医疗保健。在动态的社交网络中，属于一个事件的同伴可以是参加会议的人，教室里的学生，公司的雇员，世界不同地区的农民。然而，如今大量的社交网络大多以用户为中心，采用扁平结构。这阻碍了许多用户在社交网络上发布某些事件/活动的内容，因为这些内容可能被许多无关的同伴访问。例如，在Facebook和Twitter等社交网络中，发布的内容与所有用户的连接共享。即使有将朋友组织成小组的工具，它也是高度静态和繁琐的。在谷歌Circles这样的群组社交网络中，用户可以在不征得他人同意的情况下将另一个用户添加到自己的圈子中，从而损害了用户的隐私和内容安全。Whatsapp等服务的界面过于简化，即使用户对内容不感兴趣，也会将内容推送给群组中的用户。在Dropbox或谷歌Drive等文件共享/协作服务中，如果允许“共享文件夹”的所有成员贡献内容，则可以控制其他人的内容。他们可以删除或修改他人的内容，从而损害内容的安全性。此外，这些服务没有用户友好的界面。因此，基于云的动态社交网络（如eCloud）具有强大的商业影响力。该团队开发了基于云的服务架构，用户可以使用他们的设备进行通信和协作，类似于人类交互。他们的研究探索了两种架构：(a)用户设备充当瘦客户端，使用宽带接入网络访问驻留在云中的数据；(b)分散架构，其中设备在邻近的本地（接入）网络内相互协作。作为这项研究活动的延伸，他们开发了一个名为e-Cloud的动态社交网络应用原型，并将其提供给公众使用。提出的创新提高了内容可见性，促进了内容隔离，使用户能够高效地搜索相关内容。通过基于事件/上下文的社交网络，用户可以在云中的相关社交网络中共享内容，并将其提供给对内容感兴趣的人。动态社交网络借助上下文来简化内容共享，从而防止用户被无关内容淹没。

Dynamic social networks have the potential to revolutionize the way social networks are used. Event/context-based social networks can be used to not only connect with friends to share content such as pictures and videos for fun, but can also be used in commercial settings such as enterprise, education, training, agriculture, and healthcare. In dynamic social networks, peers belonging to an event can be people attending a conference, students in a classroom, employees of a company, farmers in different parts of the world. However, today's plethora of social networks mostly have a flat structure centered around the user. This hinders many users from posting content of certain events/activities to such social networks as the content may be accessible by many irrelevant peers. For example, in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, content posted is shared with all the users' connections. Even if a facility to organize friends into groups is available, it is highly static and cumbersome. In group-based social network such as Google Circles, a user can add another user to his/her circles without the consent of the latter, thereby compromising privacy and content security. Services such as Whatsapp have an over-simplified interface with content being pushed to users in a group, even if the user is not interested in it. In file-sharing/collaboration services such as Dropbox or Google Drive, all members of a "shared folder" have control over others' content if they are allowed to contribute. They can delete or modify others' content, thus compromising content security. Also these services do not have a user-friendly interface. Hence, there is a strong commercial impact for cloud-based dynamic social networks such as eCloud.This team developed cloud-based service architecture where users can communicate and collaborate using their devices, similar to human interaction. Their research explores two architectures: (a) User devices act as thin clients, using the broadband access networks to access the data residing in the cloud, and (b) Decentralized architecture where devices collaborate with each other within the local area (access) networks while in proximity. As an extension of this research activity, they have developed a prototype dynamic social network application called e-Cloud and made it available for public use. The proposed innovation improves content visibility, facilitates content isolation, and enables users to search for relevant content efficiently. With event/context-based social networks, users can share content in the relevant social network in the cloud and make it available for people interested in the content. By streamlining content sharing with the help of context, dynamic social networks prevent overwhelming users with irrelevant content.