Enrico Franchi

Agent-based Social Networks for Enterprise Collaboration

This paper discusses the relationship between agent technology and the recent wave of online social networks in the scope of the notable scenario of enterprise collaboration. In the brief introduction on the topic, we provide a coherent view of online social networks and social network systems. Then, we emphasize some features that can be considered as notable flaws that make everyday social networks and systems unusable to facilitate enterprise collaboration. Finally, we show how agent technology can address some of the mentioned flaws. The paper terminates with some concluding remarks and with an outline of future research directions.

Social Media for Online Collaboration in Firms and Organizations

Participation in social networks has long been studied as a social phenomenon according to different theories. In particular, the notion of social capital highlights a persons benefit due to his relations with other persons, including family, colleagues, friends and generic contacts. It may be important both for the individuals that are able to accumulate large amounts, and for organizations. Nowadays, social networking systems bring many acquaintances online, both in the private and working spheres. Some systems are used both at home, for leisure goals, and on the work place, professionally. In the vast majority of cases, social networking platforms are still used without corporate blessing. However, several traditional information systems, such as CRMs and ERPs, have also been modified in order to include social aspects. This article shows the role of social capital in the participation in online social networking activities, in the various cases of Virtual Organizations, Virtual Teams, and online Networks of Practice. It describes the present situation, which is characterized by great promises and mixed initial results, and some possible prospects.

Blogracy: A Peer-to-Peer Social Network

The current approach to build social networking systems is to create huge centralized systems owned by a single company. However, such strategy has many drawbacks, e.g., lack of privacy, lack of anonymity, risks of censorship and operating costs. In this paper the authors propose a novel P2P system that leverages existing, widespread and stable technologies such as DHTs and BitTorrent. In particular, they introduce a key-based identity system and a model of social relations for distributing content efficiently among interested readers. The system they propose, Blogracy, is a micro-blogging social networking system focused on: i anonymity and resilience to censorship; ii authenticatable content; iii semantic interoperability using activity streams. The authors have implemented the system and conducted various experiments to study its behaviour. The results are presented here, regarding i communication delays for some simulations of node churn, ii delays measured in test operations over PlanetLab, in direct communication, and iii through the I2P anonymizing network.

Supporting Social Networks With Agent-Based Services

Current approaches to build social networking systems are based on a centralized architecture because it allows a simple browser-based user experience and makes easier and more efficient to implement many algorithms used in a social networking site e.g., friend suggestion, However this kind of architecture has many drawbacks for its users, e.g., lack of privacy, lack of anonymity, risks of censorship and operating costs. This paper presents a system, called Blogracy, which uses widespread and stable peer-to-peer technologies, such as distributed hash tables and BitTorrent, for coping with intrinsic defects of centralized architectures and for being the basis of solid distributed social networking platforms. Moreover, Blogracy takes advantages of multi-agent systems for simplifying the implementation of social network services in a decentralized setting.