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"Face2Facebook" by Tino Dobra
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Features of social networks on the web are expanded to the human body. It is than possible to exchange personal information with your mobile phone (using Bluetooth).
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Social Networks
It seems that almost all social networks are so called “small world” type networks (Stanley Milgram), where the maximum path length between people is shorter than expected.
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One of the biggest social networks is Facebook.com—a sponsored platform on the Internet—where members can create a personal profile and keep in touch with students and collegians. They can create photo albums, groups and can send messages to other members. The length of your friends list seems to be an indicator for the social status: the more friends you have, the more popular you appear to be. Therefore you may accept an invitation to another member’s friends list, even if you didn’t know that member well.
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The idea: physical proximity as a friendship indicator
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Face2Facebook
This is a concept where some behavior of the Facebook platform will be transferred to the real world. Manage your friends lists by physical contact and automatically search for nearby mutual friends. The functionality of digital social networks is linked to the human body.
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choosey: save new friends by physical contact
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easy: nearby friends of friends are displayed
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Functionality
Over an add-on integrated into the Facebook platform, you can give your mobile phone a definite identification. This is then stored on the device using a Java applet and transmitted to other mobile phones via Bluetooth. The device’s id is shown to all other mobile phones other than your Facebook user name, which is only displayed to your friends.
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if the mobile phones are less than 1 meter away from each other...
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...the signal strength is mostly higher than 6dB
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After physical contact (i.e. hugging someone) the person will be added to the friends list. This is done by analyzing the signal strength of the Bluetooth connection between the two mobile devices.
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Java applet on the phone
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the own id is transmitted and the phone searches for contacts within range
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To find new contacts around you, your phone searches for other IDs and tries to match these with your friends’ Facebook lists to find friends of friends (“small world” connections).
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Conclusion
By binding some behavior of digital social networks to the human body, the inhibition threshold to add new contacts as friends increases. At the same time, one is able to stumble on “small world” networks in his everyday life but a face to face communication is always more choosey.
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