Online Social Networking and Mobility Traces

As part of the Cityware Project in Bath, UK, Vassilis Kostakos released a Bluetooth application that links proximity data from the physical space (mobility traces) with the online network of Facebook. It aims at exploring how your real world and online social networks are intertwined. Whereas it has some similarities with Nathan Eagle’s Reality Mining, here the spatial traces are enhanced by the large amount of information disclosed on the web. The BBC has a piece on it: Bluetooth helps Facebook friends. The application is available at http://apps.facebook.com/cityware.

Relation to my thesis: The linking of online social networking and mobility traces, goes in the same direction as what I have been working on with Flickr and what could be done with iFind.