Mingle spontaneous social network

Abstract

Social networks provide a new way of communication that still preserves our human social interaction. Due to the widespread use of mobile devices, people tend to use their smartphone or tablet as the main way to make that interaction. Furthermore, applications developed to these devices are fostering the use of contextual information, such as the location of the user. In this way, this article proposes Mingle, a model for a spontaneous social network targeted at mobile devices. In our proposal, the social network is spontaneous, i.e. involves only people that are physically present in a specific location. Besides presenting the model, we show a developed prototype using Android-based devices. We evaluated Mingle employing two strategies, a usage case and a performance evaluation. The results were encouraging and show the potential of deploying Mingle in real situations.