Social Networking: Power to the People*
Social Networking: Power to the People⋆ Stefano Bortoli, Paolo Bouquet, and Themis Palpanas University of Trento, Dept. of Information Science and Engineering, Trento, Italy {bortoli, bouquet, themis}@disi.unitn.eu Abstract. Social networking sites have gained much popularity in the re- cent years, because of the opportunities they give people to connect to each other in an easy and timely manner, and to exchange and share various kinds of information. However, these sites are architected based on a cen- tralized paradigm, which limits the mobility of their users, and ultimately, their chances for establishing new relationships and benefiting from diverse networking services. In this paper, we argue for a decentralized paradigm for social networking, in which users retain control of their profiles, and social networking sites focus on the delivery of innovative and competitive services. Our position is that only in this environment will both the social networking sites and their users be able to develop to their full potential. Keywords: social network portability, unique identification 1 A Different Position on Social Networking Social networking sites have in the recent years gained considerable popularity in global scale, and have attracted a significant part of the online community. The above observations can be explained by the fact that these sites make it possible for people to connect to each other in an easy and timely manner, and to exchange and share various kinds of information among them. 1.1 The Centralized Paradigm of Today Most social network services (like Facebook [1], MySpace [5] or LinkedIn [4]) are based on the following high-level architecture: a central repository in which they store data about users and their connections; and a set of modules offering users networking services (e.g., finding other people, sharing pictures/videos, exchang- ing professional information, etc.).
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