Introduction to mobile social networks

Abstract

Recently, personal hand-held mobile devices (e.g., MP3 players, PDAs, and smart- phones) have become more and more popular. Mobile users carrying such devices can report two different experiences with network services. The experience is nor- mally good in districts where Internet connectivity is available, and the users can access all Internet applications. On the other hand, in between such “Internet con- nectivity islands”, users are unable to transfer any information, even though the party that the user wishes to communicate with is within range of his/her mobile device and has wireless communication capabilities.