LBSN 09

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/xingx/LBSN2009.htm

Nov. 3, 2009, Seattle, WA, USA Held in conjunction with the 17th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems

Social networking services have become extremely popular in recent years, especially for young people. However, they are still rooted in the virtual world. People usually need to sit behind a desktop computer to upload photos, write blogs and communicate with friends. The development of wireless networks and location sensing technologies have made it easier to track and share personal location information on the fly. By adding a location dimension, we can bring social networking back from the virtual world into real life and allow real-life experiences to be shared in a more convenient way. We define Location Based Social Networks (LBSN) as social network services where people can track and share location related information with each other, via either mobile or desktop computers. As location is one of the most important aspects for peoples everyday lives, a lot of novel application scenarios can be supported by LBSN. For example, we can collect and share more trustworthy location recommendations within LBSN and use them to rank interesting locations, discover new places, people and activities. The objective of this workshop is to provide a single forum for researchers and technologists to discuss the state-of-the-art, present their contributions, and set future directions in emerging innovative research for location based social networks.