An online marketplace for geosocial data

Abstract

When recording their GPS trajectories or posting geo-tagged content on social networks, people produce social spatio-temporal data that can be stored and shared, namely geosocial data. Much of these spatio-temporal data can be used by organizations and applications, for statistical analysis or to provide services that are based on data. By letting people sell the data they produce, to different consumers, both sides can benefit. Thus, we present here a visionary idea of a geosocial marketplace where people and organizations can sell, buy and exchange geosocial data, that is, trade with spatio-temporal data pertaining people. We discuss the involved challenges, such as how to define supply and demand, pricing data, privacy issues and measuring the amount of data being exchanged. We explain the importance of the approach and its applicability. We believe that the proposed vision could motivate followup research in the area of sharing and exchanging spatio-temporal data as well as determining appropriate price points.