An Architecture for Mobile Social Networking Applications

Mobile Semantic Web provides a new way of developing context-aware social networking applications. Social networking applications are changing the way of communication by using user's context-information. For example, micro-blogging has become a smart way of conveying the current situation and activity by using user context. There is currently a significant difference between using social networking applications on a static computer compared to a mobile device, even if current mobile devices are powerful and have good connectivity. The difference is primarily related to the mobility aspect since the user contexts may change more frequently and the user may not be able to interact with the mobile device. In this paper we identify common characteristics of current social networking applications and how they attract users. Finally, we propose an agent-based system architecture that is based on a distributed platform for developing semantic and semi-automated mobile social networking applications.