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We consider a mobile ad hoc network setting where Bluetooth enabled mobile devices communicate directly with other devices as they meet opportunistically. We design and implement a novel mobile social networking middleware named MobiClique. MobiClique forms and exploits ad hoc social networks to disseminate content using a store-carry-forward technique. Our approach distinguishes itself from other mobile social software by removing the need for a central server to conduct exchanges, by leveraging existing social networks to bootstrap the system, and by taking advantage of the social network overlay to disseminate content. We also propose an open API to encourage third-party application development. We discuss the system architecture and three example applications. We show experimentally that MobiClique successfully builds and maintains an ad hoc social network leveraging contact opportunities between friends and people sharing interest(s) for content exchanges. Our experience also provides insight into some of the key challenges and short-comings that researchers face when designing and deploying similar systems.

Designing for Social Interaction

People have long shared product opinions with friends and family through word-of-mouth. Today, social media tools enable consumers to extend their connections and conduct commerce in powerful new ways.

Social network users are a highly coveted group of consumers. Across all age brackets, they were more likely than average to make an online purchase, according to a May 2009 survey by Anderson Analytics. What’s more, social network users are sharing recommendations with greater frequency than generally expected. A Q1 2009 Razorfish survey of social network users found that some 29% reported sharing their views online at least every few weeks, while 10% said they made such contributions at least every few days.

According to a new study from Pew Internet and American Life Project, technology does not lead to social isolation, as many often suspected. Instead, researchers found that online participation and mobile phone usage leads to people having larger and more diverse core discussion networks.

On average, a person spends 195 days of the year having mobile phone contact with others, but face-to-face interactions occur on about 210 days per year.

In addition, mobile users have around 15% more family members with whom they can discuss important matters and tend to have 25% more core network members who are not family members. Overall, those who use mobile phones have core networks that are 12% larger than those who don't.

This research should put an end to the argument over the relevance of social media in the industrial sector. In fact, it appears that by percentage, B2B is ahead of B2C in some key categories.

This research should put an end to the argument over the relevance of social media in the industrial sector. In fact, it appears that by percentage, B2B is ahead of B2C in some key categories.

The number of people who use social networks from their smartphones skyrocketed 187%, to 18.3 million unique users, in July, compared with the same month a year earlier, says Nielsen. Social networking is among the fastest-growing activities on mobile devices, along with search and checking news, says Jon Stewart, Nielsen's research director for technology and search.

About 65 million of Facebook's 300 million members are mobile users. Eight months ago, it was 20 million. Of MySpace's estimated 125 million members worldwide, about 25 million use mobile devices. A year ago, it was 6 million.

Basics Of Social Media Roi

n fact, 84% of respondents said they don’t currently measure the ROI (return on investment) of their social media programs.

"Mobile will become the center of your digital channel relationships," Harteveldt said, pointing to 36% of smartphone users who access the Web daily from their devices. One in four use the device to research products they will buy either online or offline. The heavy lifting needed to become an effective multichannel marketer often involves eliminating silo operations; aggregating, analyzing and acting on consumer-profile data from across the company; and integrating online and offline consumer marketing, sales and service.

In a grab for young male consumers, Pizza Hut is using social media and mobile connected devices to partner with Electronic Arts Sports and other video game companies, fight night and films such as Terminator 4.

Forrester reports that online captured 29% of consumers' reported general merchandise retail spending in the second quarter of 2009. Half of all online Americans participate in social networks, a number that has increased 46% in the past year.

This research proves once again that social media has penetrated parts of the business world at a tremendous speed. It also indicates that corporate familiarity with and usage of social media within the Inc. 500 has continued to grow in the past 12 months.

As the social economy swells and continues to flourish, many of us are abandoning the forums and systems where businesses held the illusion of control in favor of communities where we dictate the level of value we give and take. Accordingly, brands are turning in our direction. We are, after all, the keepers of social capital and with it, we make valuable decisions and also impact and influence the decisions of others.

So over 10% of the world’s professionals are already on LinkedIn. And with the social network now signing up a new member every second of every hour of every day, it shouldn’t be too long before the other 90% of the world’s business professionals eventually wind up in the LinkedIn universe.

Anyhoo, more interestingly, mobile search is booming, with 32% of searchers with internet-capable cellphones now searching for local business information, an 11% increase from 2008. Some 60% of smartphone owners search either via their on-board browsers or via applications, and you can bet most of those will be iPhone users.

The study also shows that the most popular local content categories searched on mobile are directories (42%), maps (41%), restaurants (37%) and movies (30%).

In this article we ‘ll review the present state of the market, the key App Store building blocks and where will the market be heading in two years.

And while technical openness was established 7 years ago, what was lacking all these years was commercial openness; the funnel between external developers and in-market handsets was so thin that very few software players could pass through. It took Symbian six years to reach 10,000 applications, while it took Apple only 6 months (see our earlier analysis). In the first year of operation, Apple’s App Store brought in 65,000+ apps, 100,000 registered developers, 1.5Billion application downloads and availability to consumers across 77 countries through 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch devices sold.

n this historical context, it is easy to see that App Stores are a developer-to-consumer merchandising channel; a go-to-market vehicle for allowing consumers to distribute and retail their applications directly to the end-consumers, while taking out the middlemen from distribution and retailing.

increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and create ongoing customer conversations

Social networking was found to fail to have any meaning influence on purchase decisions, although it was still viewed as helpful by shoppers, especially Gen Y.

Once inside stores, self-checkout is the most widely adopted technology used (71%),

Handheld scanners, kiosks for swiping loyalty cards to receive personalized coupons and touch screen signage showed high interest.