Towards Ad-hoc circles in Social Networking Sites

Abstract

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) allow users to publish posts to certain user-defined circles (sets of users). However, existing SNS models are limited in several ways. First, it is not practical to predefine all circles a user will ever need for disseminating her posts. Second, existing SNSs do not currently have an effecitive mechanism for a user to create and/or customize dynamic (ad-hoc) circles for each publishing session. Third, SNSs do not have features to assist users to manage and use the circles in an easy way by considering the user's ever-changing habits accordingly. In this paper, we propose a novel model for creating ad-hoc circles as needs arise. We present a recommendation framework - the Circle OpeRation RECommendaTion (CORRECT) framework - to assist users in easily utilizing our proposed model. Contrary to current SNS offerings, our proposed model does not require a user to create an extensive list of predefined circles; instead, ad-hoc circles are recommended based on a few building-block circles the user has defined and historical ad-hoc circles the user has created. Copyright 2012 ACM.