Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Social Network Systems

Abstract

In the past couple of years, websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube have rocketed to the top of web popularity. These sites are instances of what is known as "Web 2.0". Notably, and in contrast to the more traditional popular sites such as portals, search engines, or news aggregators, these sites are organized around user identities and a social network (or graph) of links between identities. The social network gives users a new basis for forming and maintaining relationships and locating, consuming, filtering, and publishing content. Since the social network is expressed in a formal way, it can also be used by non-user system components to improve performance, security, or other objectives based on assumptions about trust or shared interests. A social network system is a software system organized around a dynamic social network core. The study and understanding of these systems is highly relevant to the systems community. Surprisingly, despite both their exciting possibilities and their amazing popularity growth, social network systems have been largely neglected by researchers. To begin to remedy this, we have organized this workshop; the First Workshop on Social Network Systems (SocialNets'08). As a first-year workshop, we were pleasantly surprised to receive sixteen high-quality submissions. We accepted eight into the workshop, for an acceptance rate of exactly 50 percent. A tight reviewing schedule gave the program committee just over one week to complete and submit reviews. However, we are happy to report that all papers received at least three reviews from program committee members. The workshop papers cover a range of topics on social network systems. The presentations are organized into three broad sessions; the measurement and analysis of existing social networks, issues of security and privacy in social network systems, and new applications that leverage social networks. Many of the papers are likely to spark lively discussion at the workshop.