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Contribution to Book
Exploring the Social Implications of Location Based Social Networking: An inquiry into the perceived positive and negative impacts of using LBSN between friends
9th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Business (2010)
  • Sarah Jean Fusco, University of Wollongong
  • K. Michael, University of Wollongong
  • M.G. Michael, University of Wollongong
Abstract

Location based social networking (LBSN) applications are part of a new suite of emerging social networking tools that run on the Web 2.0 platform. LBSN is the convergence between location based services (LBS) and online social networking (OSN). LBSN applications offer users the ability to look up the location of another “friend” remotely using a smart phone, desktop or other device, anytime and anywhere. Users invite their friends to participate in LBSN and there is a process of consent that follows. Friends have the ability to alter their privacy settings to allow their location to be monitored by another at differing levels of accuracy (e.g. suburb, pinpoint at the street address level, or manual location entry). This paper explores the impact of LBSN upon society, especially upon trust between friends. The study used focus groups to collect data, and a qualitative approach towards analysis. The paper concludes that while there are a great many positive uses of LBSN, there are some significant problems with current applications, and that better design is required to ensure that these technologies are not exploited against a user to commit harm.

Keywords
  • Location Based Services,
  • Social Networking,
  • Location Based Social Networking,
  • LBSN,
  • Positive and Negative Impacts,
  • friendship,
  • implications
Disciplines
Publication Date
June 13, 2010
Editor
George Giaglis
Publisher
IEEE
Citation Information
Sarah Jean Fusco, K. Michael and M.G. Michael. "Exploring the Social Implications of Location Based Social Networking: An inquiry into the perceived positive and negative impacts of using LBSN between friends" Athens, Greece9th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Business (2010)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mgmichael/56/