Comealong: Empowering experience-sharing through social networks

Abstract

In this paper we present a social platform that empowers real-life social experiences by using the crowd to help people discover interesting events around a particular location and make the best of the actual experience. We demonstrate how current systems cover only partially the social and individual motivations on deciding and teaming up for events, and propose i) a system of implicit and explicit incentives that rewards intention and experience sharing within circles based on friendship or interests and ii) a discovery algorithm that combines the importance of coming along with friends with the personal interests to recommend events. The resulting platform has been applied to generic events as well as domain-specific ones such as shows in movie theaters.