Simplifying Cooperation with End Users

Abstract

1. MOTIVATION Traditional virtual communities such as bulletin board system (BBS) and Internet forum have clearly shown the capability of networking strangers to share useful information. Such communities do not require people to report their physical locations even if the community and relevant topics are limited to a particular place. However, as the portable device (e.g., smartphones and tablets) becomes a main gateway to Internet, we have already noticed two significant changes on the location-transparent virtual communities. First, information exchanged now is combined with physical locations. Second, by directly using location information, people sharing similar interests can be recognized and self-organized. While conceptual applications based on above changes, such as participatory sensing and urban gaming, were also proposed recently, mobile system researchers should ask if technologies can accelerate the realization of such applications. This thesis explores this question by breaking emerged communities down to two organization models, and focusing on different pain points of each one. We now briefly describe the differences of two models in terms of the social motivation of forming a community and the network architecture of connecting members.