Event-Based Mobile Social Networks: Services, Technologies and Applications

Event-based Mobile Social Networks (MSNs) are a<br>special type of mobile social network that has an immanently temporal common feature which allows any smart phone user to create events to share group messaging, locations, photos and insights among participants. The emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) and event-based social applications integrated with contextawareness ability can be helpful in planning and organizing social events like meetings, conferences, and tradeshows. This paper first provides review of the event-based social networks and the basic principles and architecture of event-based MSNs. Next, event-based MSNs with smartphone contained technology elements such as context-aware mobility and multimedia sharing are presented. By combining the feature of context-aware mobility with multimedia sharing in event-based MSNs, event organizers and planners with the service providers optimize their capability to recognize value for the multimedia services they deliver. The unique features of the current event-based MSNs give rise to the major technology trends to watch for designing applications. These mobile applications and their main features are described. At the end, discussions on the evaluation of the event-based mobile applications based on their main features are presented. Some open research issues and challenges in this<br>important area of research are also outlined.基于事件的移动社交网络（Event-based Mobile Social Networks，MSNs）是一类特殊的移动社交网络，其内在具备时序共性特征，允许任意智能手机用户创建事件，并在参与者之间共享群组消息、位置信息、照片及个人见解。物联网（Internet of Things，IoT）与集成上下文感知能力的基于事件社交应用的出现，有助于规划和组织会议、研讨会、贸易展等社交活动。本文首先对基于事件社交网络及基于事件的移动社交网络的基本原理与架构进行综述。随后，本文介绍了搭载上下文感知移动性、多媒体共享等智能手机相关技术元素的基于事件的移动社交网络。通过将上下文感知移动性与多媒体共享特性融入基于事件的移动社交网络，活动组织者、策划者及服务提供商可优化其对所提供多媒体服务的价值识别能力。当前基于事件的移动社交网络的独特特性，催生了应用设计中值得关注的主流技术趋势。本文对这类移动应用及其核心特性进行了阐述。最后，本文针对基于核心特性的事件类移动应用的评估展开讨论，并概述了该重要研究领域中尚存的开放性研究问题与挑战。