Pervasive social network

Abstract

Social Networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have become extremely important and are used by millions of people worldwide. In addition, the advent of mobile technology coupled with advances on the communications front, meant that technology has started to move away from the traditional desktop setting and is becoming more pervasive. This research aims to show how a big screen setup in a public space, displaying a stream of comments from an online social network, can be utilised by the general public. The goal is to find whether such a system is able to instigate discussions between people - both physically and virtually, on the social network. The evaluation of privacy concerns, related to such a system in comparison with traditional social networks, will also be an important focus of this research. Similar work has already been done in particular contexts such as a classroom or a conference, however, we aim in finding specific uses for such a system where the context is not as clearly defined. In order to achieve this, we created a social network called Occupy. The study described in this paper took place at the University of Malta, where a big screen projecting the stream of comments from our online social network was setup for discussion among those people on campus and those from outside. 663 of the users of our system believe that a pervasive social network adds value to traditional social networks, mainly by merging virtual discussions happening on the social network with physical discussions between groups of people. Through the use of a survey, analysis of the collected data and a focus group, benefits regarding the use of a pervasive social network can be presented.