Implicit Social Networking: Discovery of Hidden Relationships, Roles and Communities among Consumers

This paper proposes the implicit social networking as an innovative methodology for approaching consumers who possess information-rich user profiles based on aplethora of online services they use. An implicit social network is not explicitly built by consumers themselves, but implicitly calculated by third parties based on a level of a common interest between consumers (i.e., profile matchmaking). The analysis of aconsumer social network created in such a manner enables discovery of hidden roles, relationships and communities among consumers and represents a basis for provisioning of innovative services (e.g., personalized and/or context-aware services such as recommender systems). The implicit social networking methodology is evaluated through two pilot cases: (i) implicit social networking based on the SmartSocial platform; and (ii) implicit social networking of IPTV users. The generalizability of the implicit social networking is demonstrated through additional example aimed not at external company stakeholders (e.g., company consumers), but at internal stakeholders (i.e., company employees) through the implicit corporate social networking pilot case.