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Evolution of Social IoT World
Internet. During the 1980s, Bulletin Board System (BBS) used telephone lines via a modem
for online meeting, which allowed users to communicate with a central system where the
user could download files or games and post messages to others. BBSs were often used
by hobbyists who carefully nurtured the social aspects and interest-specific nature of their
projects. During the mid-1990s, Yahoo had set up shop and Amazon had begun selling
books which perhaps provided encouragement for every household to have a PC. In 1995,
the modern social networking concept was born through the site Classmates.com, catering the idea of virtual reunion of community. Early users could not create profiles, but
they could locate themselves in their virtual community. It was a massive hit during those
days. In 1997, the concept of six degrees was realized through SixDegrees.com. The theory
somehow associated with actor Kevin Bacon that no person is separated by more than six
degrees from another. SixDegrees.com facilitated its users to create profiles, invite friends,
organize groups, and surf other user profiles. Its founders worked the six degrees angle hard
by encouraging members to bring more people into the fold. Demographic-driven markets
were evolved virtually through the sites like AsianAvenue.com in 1997, BlackPlanet.com
in 1999, and MiGente.com in 2000. In 2002, social networking hit really its stride with the
launch of Friendster. Friendster used degree of separation (similar to the SixDegrees.com)
having a new concept of “Circle of Friends” dreaming to discover a different community
between people who truly have common bonds. Within a year after its launch, Friendster
boasted more than 3 million registered users and ample investment interests.
In 2003, LinkedIn took a decidedly more serious, sober approach to the social networking phenomenon, making a resource for business people who want to connect with other
professionals. Today, LinkedIn boasts more than 450 million members through its referred
term “connections.” MySpace (2003) was once a favorite among young adult, demographic
with music, videos, and funky, feature-filled environment. In 2004, Facebook launched as a
Harvard-only exercise by university students who initially peddled their product to other
university students. It remained a campus-oriented site for two full years and opened the
access to public in 2006. Its innovative features, “Like” button, numerous built-in Apps
made the platform user-friendly. The open API made it possible for third-party developers to create applications that work within Facebook itself. The site currently boasts more
than 1.3 billion active users. Realizing the power of social networking, Google decided to
launch Google+ in 2007. To date, it has more than 2.5 billion active monthly users. Over the
course of the past 2 years, “Fourth screen” technology like smartphones, tablets, etc., has
changed social networking and the way we communicate with one another entirely. Photo,
video, and message sharing applications such as Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp exist
almost entirely on mobile. Users also use their smartphones to check in to various locations
around the globe including matchmaking services (Foursquare). Mobile-based platforms
blend social networking in an entirely different manner than their web-based counterparts.
Social network analysis uses two kinds of tools from mathematics to represent information about patterns of ties among social actors: graphs and matrices. SNA-based graphs or
sociograms consist of points (or nodes) to represent actors and lines (or edges) to represent
ties or relations (see Figure 5.3a, b). However, when there are many actors and/or many
kinds of relations, the sociograms become so visually complicated that it is very difficult
to identify the patterns as shown in Figure 5.3c. It is also possible to represent information
about social networks in the form of matrices. Representing the information in this way also
allows the application of mathematical and computer tools to summarize and find patterns.
According to Tripathy and Panda (2010), a social network can be modeled as a simple
graph G = (V, E, L, ζ), where V is the set of vertices of the graph, E is the edge set, L is the label
set, and ζ is the labeling function from the vertex set V to the label set L, that is, ζ: V → L.
Evolution of Social IoT World
Internet. During the 1980s, Bulletin Board System (BBS) used telephone lines via a modem
for online meeting, which allowed users to communicate with a central system where the
user could download files or games and post messages to others. BBSs were often used
by hobbyists who carefully nurtured the social aspects and interest-specific nature of their
projects. During the mid-1990s, Yahoo had set up shop and Amazon had begun selling
books which perhaps provided encouragement for every household to have a PC. In 1995,
the modern social networking concept was born through the site Classmates.com, catering the idea of virtual reunion of community. Early users could not create profiles, but
they could locate themselves in their virtual community. It was a massive hit during those
days. In 1997, the concept of six degrees was realized through SixDegrees.com. The theory
somehow associated with actor Kevin Bacon that no person is separated by more than six
degrees from another. SixDegrees.com facilitated its users to create profiles, invite friends,
organize groups, and surf other user profiles. Its founders worked the six degrees angle hard
by encouraging members to bring more people into the fold. Demographic-driven markets
were evolved virtually through the sites like AsianAvenue.com in 1997, BlackPlanet.com
in 1999, and MiGente.com in 2000. In 2002, social networking hit really its stride with the
launch of Friendster. Friendster used degree of separation (similar to the SixDegrees.com)
having a new concept of “Circle of Friends” dreaming to discover a different community
between people who truly have common bonds. Within a year after its launch, Friendster
boasted more than 3 million registered users and ample investment interests.
In 2003, LinkedIn took a decidedly more serious, sober approach to the social networking phenomenon, making a resource for business people who want to connect with other
professionals. Today, LinkedIn boasts more than 450 million members through its referred
term “connections.” MySpace (2003) was once a favorite among young adult, demographic
with music, videos, and funky, feature-filled environment. In 2004, Facebook launched as a
Harvard-only exercise by university students who initially peddled their product to other
university students. It remained a campus-oriented site for two full years and opened the
access to public in 2006. Its innovative features, “Like” button, numerous built-in Apps
made the platform user-friendly. The open API made it possible for third-party developers to create applications that work within Facebook itself. The site currently boasts more
than 1.3 billion active users. Realizing the power of social networking, Google decided to
launch Google+ in 2007. To date, it has more than 2.5 billion active monthly users. Over the
course of the past 2 years, “Fourth screen” technology like smartphones, tablets, etc., has
changed social networking and the way we communicate with one another entirely. Photo,
video, and message sharing applications such as Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp exist
almost entirely on mobile. Users also use their smartphones to check in to various locations
around the globe including matchmaking services (Foursquare). Mobile-based platforms
blend social networking in an entirely different manner than their web-based counterparts.
Social network analysis uses two kinds of tools from mathematics to represent information about patterns of ties among social actors: graphs and matrices. SNA-based graphs or
sociograms consist of points (or nodes) to represent actors and lines (or edges) to represent
ties or relations (see Figure 5.3a, b). However, when there are many actors and/or many
kinds of relations, the sociograms become so visually complicated that it is very difficult
to identify the patterns as shown in Figure 5.3c. It is also possible to represent information
about social networks in the form of matrices. Representing the information in this way also
allows the application of mathematical and computer tools to summarize and find patterns.
According to Tripathy and Panda (2010), a social network can be modeled as a simple
graph G = (V, E, L, ζ), where V is the set of vertices of the graph, E is the edge set, L is the label
set, and ζ is the labeling function from the vertex set V to the label set L, that is, ζ: V → L.