A large number
of interesting and useful mobile social applications
have been proposed. Social Serendipity [10]
is a mobile-phone-based system that combines
widely used mobile phones with the functionality
We envision that
OSN providers can
collaborate with
academia and industrial
researchers in
order to understand
user behavior in an
insightful way. This
can enhance the
user experience
interactively and
quickly. Also, this will
save operational
costs for OSN
providers.
148 IEEE Communications Magazine • September 2013
of online introduction systems to cue informal
face-to-face interactions between nearby users
who do not know each other but probably
should. Serendipity uses Bluetooth to sense
nearby people and utilizes a centralized server to
decide whether two users should be introduced
to each other. The system calculates a similarity
score by extracting the commonalities between
two proximate users’ profiles and behavioral
data, and sums them according to user-defined
weights. If the score is higher than the threshold
set by both users, the system will inform them
that someone nearby might be interested in
them. For instance, internal collaboration in
large companies can be facilitated by Serendipity
for introducing people who are working on similar
projects. It is emphasized that privacy issues
are important and fundamental in Serendipity,
and privacy-protecting tools should be designed
carefully.