Location-Based Social Networking Information

2014 2nd International Conference on Systems and Informatics (ICSAI 2014)

Location-Based Social Networking Information Services in University Campus Zizhuo Zhang, Ruda Yang, Zhengqin Li, Liwei Chen, Xiaozhi Yu Department of Electronic Engineering Tsinghua University, Beijing, China {zzz12,yrd12,li-zq12,chenlw12,yxz12} @mails.tsinghua.edu.cn Abstract—Location Based Services (LBS) and Social Networking Services (SNS) are two increasingly popular service systems which have been widely used in various applications. We offer an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the two different systems. Based on this analysis, we propose an effective approach to bridge these two different systems and demonstrate its applicability in providing a more intelligent set of campus information services. Our research focuses on constructing a platform on which teachers and students on campus can better exchange location based information. The proposed information system consists of four modules: a user information system to manage users’ personal information, a 3D campus map system to provide the exact location information of various services in campus, an information navigation system which offers a more reasonable information classification, a location information management system which not only serves as an information distribution platform but also allows users to add comments and information on the campus location themselves. Our system has come into use for one year and has served hundreds of students and teachers in Tsinghua University. Keywords-location-based services; social networking services; information system

I.

INTRODUCTION

With the development of the Location Based Services (LBS) and Social Networking Services (SNS), teachers and students in universities need a more intelligent set of campus information service system to have a higher quality of experience, especially for freshmen who have little knowledge of the location information inside universities. And this is the motivation for our research, because everyone needs to know location information and users on universities are always happy to try some newly realized technologies or ideas. This work established a location-based social networking information system and found a mechanism for users on campus to communicate with each other based on the location information around them. The key points of the system are “location-based” and “social networking”. Location based services provides services based on location information through the Internet. It can help users get the information about activities that will be held surrounding certain locations or instruct subscribers to arrive at the destination based on their present locations, etc. Location Zhao Du is the corresponding author.

978-1-4799-5458-2 ©2014 IEEE

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Yeming Tang *, Zhao Du † Information Technology Center Tsinghua University, Beijing, China * [email protected] † [email protected]

based systems have been extensively studied by researchers. Dombrowski et al. presented some issues that should be considered in designing location-based food service system [2]; Du et al. discussed four application scenarios of location-based services in campuses [3]; Berjani et al. proposed a recommendation scheme of potentially interesting spots based on regularized matrix factorization [1]. SNS can provide an online-social space to facilitate applications such as communication, collaboration, or sharing of knowledge which is extremely important in institute for education and scientific research [10]. But there are few systems that are friendly enough for freshmen to get familiar with all kinds of locations in campus in a relatively easy and fast way. Unlike general location based services, our system mainly deals with the sharing of information based on locations in the university campus. Moreover, our system provides a platform for users in campus to comment, recommend and communicate just like they play on Weibo, RenRen, or Facebook. Therefore this system is a practical experiment of combination between location information services and social networking services. However, these two concepts have different importance in our system: the location information is a based level of the services provided by our system while the communication, comments and news feeds based on the aforementioned location information is the key functionality. In the following sections we will discuss details about how “location-based services” and “social networking services” combined in our system. In recent years, colleges and universities have been investing on various E-campus programs which become part of the most important infrastructures of the university. According to Xue and Ji’s work [8], the key points of E-campus are network and informatization. Three common elements can be concluded of the present E-campuses: E-card system, university information portal which displays all sectors’ phone numbers and email addresses, and a digital map (2D or 3D) to tag important sites of the university. Some excellent Ecampuses have vertical social network services as well. For example, Tsinghua University has implemented its own social networking system for years (http://sns.join-tsinghua.edu.cn/). Although E-campus system has greatly improve information distribution and exchange in university campus, we must realize that present E-campus programs still have weaknesses, such as imperfection of structure, loss of integrity, and bad user

experience. To deal with these shortcomings, user’s feedback must be analyzed timely to facilitate improvement of E-campus programs according to users’ real needs. Users can be divided into multiple categories according to their needs. Under our framework, users are roughly divided into three categories with respect to their needs: the users who would like to cast a glance at location information about university campus, those who are interested in more detailed information about certain places inside the campus and users who wish to share comments and recommendations with other people. A good E-campus system must meet different user’s needs, at the same time keep itself contracted and concise. In this work, the campus location based information system was designed to serve new students, visitors, as well as faculties who have lived in the campus for years. The main contributions of the paper are listed below. First, users can search their interested locations directly from the digital map, then view the detailed information such as photos or comments about the locations, in a way more visual and convenient compared with traditional information systems consisting of a single information webpage. Second, locations are divided into 16 elaborately sorted categories so users can have a comfortable experience when browsing the web pages to find target locations. Third, the location information in our system is close to users’ needs. Last but not least, users can interact with the system flexibly with simple operations such as clicking the like buttons, commenting locations, or offering location information proactively. II.

LOCATION BASED SERVICES

According to Virrantaus et al., LBSs are the services that offer varieties of services by exploiting users’ location information with the help of mobile network and end-users’ mobile electronic devices [4]. The concept of LBS started early in the year of 1996, which was firstly used to specify standards in locating emergency calls. And up to now it has become so important that countless applications are built based on it. In recent ten years, smart mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) have been widely available, and other supporting technologies and protocols such as Global Positioning Services as well as 3G broadband wireless services have been successfully transplanted to the mobile terminals, thus making real-time and accurate positioning possible. As a consequence, LBS becomes one of the dominant factors that can influence the whole framework of the wireless services market. Firstly, LBS was designed in the use of emergency service. In an emergency, people are too nervous to clearly give a description about their whereabouts when they are calling for long-distance assistance. This will possibly cause great trouble for the rescue center because they know little about the spot of the emergency. However, LBS can find out where the emergency happens as long as there are end-devices supporting GPS at the scene. So with the help of LBS, aids can reach in a shorter time. secondly, LBS plays important part in varieties of navigation services: subscribers provide their destiny to the service provider and then the provider will handle the position information of users to give a right direction back to them; thirdly, LBS is an ideal match for information services: service providers can provide

personalized information to users based on their locations, such as some nearby hotels, KTVs, or restaurants, etc. Our system is somewhat similar to the last example, since our system mainly provide a list of location information, however, Paolo et al. thought that the third example above is in the category of “first generation LBS” since they are reactive, and somewhat operator-centric [5]. In Paolo’s opinion, the first generation LBS failed partly because the center of the system was operators or service providers but not users. Nowadays LBS has turn to user-centric and proactive, thus more users begin to enjoy LBS. III. SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICES Danah m. boyd firstly gave a concise definition of SNS, which concludes three evident features of SNS in the view of users: a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, a list of users with whom they share a connection, and traversing the list of connections [6]. Its theoretical basis can date back to 1960s when Stanley Milgram published his famous mathematical conjecture, “Six Degrees of Separation” [9]. Since then, researchers have begun to deploy varieties of SNS. An issue on SNS published in 2012 revealed that social networking accounts for almost 10 percent of the total time spent on the internet [7]. Nowadays, the success of social networking sites such as RenRen, Weibo, and Facebook is a vivid illustration for the importance of SNS. SNS helps people enhance their social intercourse with the help of the Internet. According to Irfan et al., people can be interactive and socialize through the coherent medium provided by social networking platforms [10]. For students and teachers living in universities, various forms of online contacts have nearly become a must or habit, such as online collaboration, online knowledge sharing and online chatting, etc. So adding some elements of SNS into our system is necessary. In our system, providing a social networking platform was designed to be the ultimate functionality. Users communicate with each other based on the location information. They can comment on some popular locations, express likes and dislikes towards certain locations, or even write some recommendations for other subscribers to refer. In this way, we made a good fusion of LBS and SNS, with LBS being assistant and SNS the kernel. However, without an example, it is hard to clarify all the designing ideas in our system. So in the following paragraphs, two usage scenarios will be compared to point out how SNS promote the performance of our system. IV. USING PATTERN OF THE TRADITIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEM Suppose T is a freshman to a university. He wants to get some information about a building M in the campus and locations around it. At first he can search M in the digital map, and get the basic position information of the destination. Then he can look through some spots near M, thus a larger range of locations’ information will be obtained by T. At last T has to go to the university portal to find details about M, such as infrastructures, open-time, or sectors inside it. There is no userto-user communication in the whole process. And users cannot

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have access to the contribute information to the database since data is controlled only by the operators of the information management department. This monotonous information transmission procedure will possibly cause unsatisfactory user experience and therefore retard the process of a freshman to get acquainted with locations in university campuses. Below is a picture (Fig. 1) concisely describing the scenario. In this effect drawing, every user is isolated because they don’t share ideas when acquiring the location information and they can merely send request and wait for the outcome, without much proactive contribution to the system.

Fig. 2 into the style as if they are gathering to discuss something or share some ideas.

Figure 2. Figure 1.

V.

VI. DESIGN AND DEPLOYMENT OF LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL NETWORKING INFORMATION SYSTEM IN UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

using pattern of the traditional information system

USING PATTERN OF THE LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL NETWORKING INFORMATION SYSTEM

To make the information services close to users, we try to combine the concept of “Location Based Services” and “Social Networking Services” into the system. So the new system will present a totally different form of operating scenario. A supposed scene is taken to analyze: at this time T1 is a freshman to the university whilst O1, O2, and O3 are old folks living in the campus. The story still focuses on the building M. To learn some information about M, T can search it in the digital map or directly find it in the system’s front page. If T1 finds M through the front page, he can then go to the digital map by clicking the hyperlink on the front page to see more realistic pictures (photos or 3D figures) showing the position of M or its nearby vicinity, at the same time he can also go to the details page to see some detailed information of M, and here our old seniors may have written some personal critics or proposals. Later T1, O1, and O2 can have some chat about the building M just on pages displaying the detailed information of M, in a way like users chat on RenRen or Weibo. Then they may become friends and communicate with each other over other interesting problems about locations in the campus. The whole process is similar to a using pattern of certain social networking sites. So in our system, users have access to the contents of the location information (like O1, O2, O3 can write some comments of the detailed information of M). Users become the center of detailed location information. At the same time, user-to-user communications become possible and convenient. Fig. 2 illustrates this new framework of the information system. To sharp the contrast with the traditional information system, we change the sequencing of the users in

using pattern of location-based information system

Now we can briefly summarize the important points in our location based social networking information system. The primary function of our system is providing information of locations inside the campus. We demonstrate these locations in a relatively elegant way to attract as many users as possible. The ultimate functionality of our system is providing a platform for social intercourse on the Internet based on some popular locations. To fulfil the functionality, we carefully design the relationship between information distribution and social networking services so as to make users comfortable. In the course of system development, we decided to build a website that can synthesize key elements of social networking as well as location based information. Generally, our system can be classified into four main modules: a user information management system, a 3D campus map system, an information navigation system, and a location information management system. In detail, these modules are implemented respectively by a front page to display categories of locations, a digital 3D map of Tsinghua University, several assistant pages for showing list of all useful information concerning with the locations, pages to show details of certain locations, and the already existed social network site of Tsinghua University which serves as the login and registration page. Fig. 3 demonstrate the whole frame of our system. And in the following, we will see in detail how these modules are deployed.

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dialog box. In this way users could easily refer to the relevant image or text information when consulting the 3D map. C.

Figure 3.

frame of location-based social networking information system

A.

Design of User Information Management The key point of User Information Management is registration and login. We adopt email registration for the convenience of identity verification. Because the system mainly provides services for students and teachers on campus, the email address for registration was strictly limited to be authorized by educational institute. Thus in the early stage, administrators could have much convenience in analyzing users’ behavior and habits as well as purging negative opinions or statements in the system, because they could easily trace back to users’ department by analyzing the source of the email address. This measure also simplifies the privacy and security problems in the system, with all registered users bearing similar competence in discipline and politeness. B.

3D Campus Map System At the first stage, the digital map was chosen to be the 3D campus map system owned by Tsinghua University. There are three reasons for choosing the 3D campus map: in light of positioning accuracy, this campus map system exceed most open digital map; at the same time, the 3D geographic information map system provides a more lifelike appearance compared with traditional 2D digital maps; moreover, the functions of this system are relatively complete. The functionality provided by the 3D map system includes location searching services, an introduction dialog box which displays detailed information of locations and a zooming in/out button which allows users to change the size of the map according to their needs. However, the existing map system still has some disadvantages. First, there were some differences between real surroundings and the pictures appearing on the campus map system. Moreover, all the names marked on the campus map system are official ones while students always prefer to use nickname, which may cause confusion. In order to make the system close to students, we replenish almost two hundred pieces of location information. Nicknames that are popular and easy to understand for students and teachers on campus are also added. Two functions of the map were also changed: first, at every single location, the hyperlink to the pages of details is added to the introduction dialog box; second, the real photo images reserved of some locations is added to the introduction

Design of Information Navigation We designed a method of classification for the numerous location information so that users can enjoy an excellent quality of experience when they are trying to look for certain locations information on the front page. We divided all the locations into 16 categories. They are food, classroom, store, library, gym facilities, ATM, bicycle, bookstore, dormitory, express, printing and photos, sightseeing, departments, medical, hotel, hairdressing and bathing. At the same time, most of the categories have their own sub-keys to clarify the detailed discrepancy when the first level headings cannot give accurate descriptions, for example, there are sub-keys like “convenience store” and “supermarket” under the category of “store”. We also designed a mechanism that can automatically reorder the categories according to real-time access frequency. So the order of the categories above was always arranged to make users see the information that is most frequently referred (much likely the most useful) to at first sight. D.

Design of Location Information Management The Location Information Management system consists of two kinds of webpages: The first one is pages for lists of all information, and the second one is pages for details. Pages for lists of all information provide collections of all kinds of locations. On these pages the information of all location is displayed in the form of lists. For every single piece of the information, totally six fields are included: the location name, a brief introduction, the tags for the location, the comments given by users on the location, the hyperlink to the position on the 3D campus map system, and the link to the pages for details. With the help of the link to the 3D campus map system, users have access to the location pictures easily whenever they feel it necessary to look at the location on the 3D campus map system. And with the link to pages for details, users can easily consult the detailed description of the target location. However, the most distinctive advantage of our campus Location Based Social Networking Information System is that it can provide users opportunities to make their own contributions to the location information. We have integrated collaborative tagging into the website, which means users can make some comments on their interested location or just state their basic attitudes towards some information by clicking “like” button, “dislike” button, or “important” button. In this way, users can express their feelings at convenience when browsing the location information. This point is very important since there was no such website before and the needs of students to express personal feelings to locations inside the university were confined. Administrators need more critics from every single student who has good ideas of the environment of the campus. So this function of campus Location Based Social Networking Information System can make great contributions to the improvements of the university’s construction and management.

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Pages for details mainly provide users with the detailed description of the target locations. Users could enter this page in two ways: from the 3D geographic system, or from the pages for list of all information. These pages are the supplements for the digital map and brief introductions for users who want to know more about some locations. And these pages also serve as the platform for users writing some comments or recommendations to enhance their social intercourse on the Internet. Therefore, pages for details are intersections of SNS and LBS. VII. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION By combining Location Based Services and Social Networking Services, we proposed a new system design which serves as a better information distribution and exchanging platform for campus students and teachers. Based on the system design, a website was constructed and hundreds of students and teachers in Tsinghua University have been taking advantage of our work. Our system makes a good start of the combination of the campus location and information. In order to offer better services to the users, more functions will be increased to the website in the future. The first function is the appointment. A large amount of activity information will be collected and delivered on the map. Users can make appointments when finding the activity they are interested in. Before the holding-day, the user will receive a reminding email about the activity. The second function is to display some realtime information. For instance, the location of the campus buses. To provide more convenient services to teachers and students, more surveys need to be done to know their needs so as to improve the management and functions of our website. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Ministry of Education and China Mobile (No. MCM20121032, MCM20130671) and the Beijing Education and Science "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" (No. CJA12134). REFERENCES [1]

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This work is supported by by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2012CB316000), the Joint Fund of

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