Name of the participant: Felix Beierle
Description of the IT research project: My project DYNAMIC deals with dynamic social graphs in distributed online social networks. Existing online social networks are mostly based on connections explicitly provided by users. DYNAMIC should extend the concept of explicit connections in online social networks by implicit, dynamic social graphs. These graphs were created by means of location, context and profile data collected on mobile devices. This results in additional, qualified connections between users, which are to be used for applications, such as search, recommendation, distribution of news or estimation of confidence measures between previously unconnected users.
The idea is to connect users from the same locations or contexts. For example, the planning of a bicycle path could be discussed within a neighbourhood. Or users with the same location could be connected so that they could form car pools. The new edges in the social graph can also be used for forwarding messages. For example, a user can search for someone to accompany him/her to a concert, a message about it can be sent along the edges between users with similar musical tastes.
Within the framework of DYNAMIC, a decentralized architecture was designed, in which the data is stored and processed directly on the user’s smartphone. The decentralisation provides a good opportunity to address questions regarding privacy and data sovereignty. Furthermore, the smartphone is the optimal device for online social network applications: It is highly personalized on the one hand and designed for social interaction on the other. Marshall McLuhan saw technology as an extension of the human being, in which sense we are all already cyborgs: The glasses are an extension of the eyes, the car is an extension of the legs. Thus, the smartphone would be an extension of the parts responsible for social interaction.
I found it exciting to start thinking about this. All in all DYNAMIC enables the dynamic connection of users under consideration of the data sovereignty of the users in a decentralised architecture.
Software Campus partners: TU Berlin, Deutsche Telekom AG
Implementation period: 01.03.2016 – 31.08.2018
Note: This SWC project resulted in the TYDR app, see here.