Mobile social networks: Design requirements, architecture, and state-of-the-art technology

Abstract

Mobile social networks (MSNs) are new systems for people to share content, communicate, and interact. Such networks combine social computing and mobile networking techniques to help in community detection, information dissemination, privacy preservation, etc. In this paper, we summarize the characteristics of MSNs and outline several requirements that should be taken into consideration during its design. A functional reference architecture of MSNs is introduced, and the building blocks of MSNs are described. We classify the literature falling under MSNs according to the building blocks of the architecture, and provide a detailed survey of MSNs. Finally, we present a discussion on the possible future development of MSNs.