Musubi: a Decentralized Mobile Social Web

Monica Lam MobiSocial Computing Laboratory, Stanford University

With Dan Boneh, Ben Dodson, Michael Fischer, Sudheendra Hangal, Abhinay Nagpal, T. J. Purtell, Ian Vo

MobiSocial Lab Affiliates: AVG, Google, ING Direct, Nokia, Sony Ericsson.

Part of the NSF Programmable Open Mobile Internet (POMI) 2020 project.

My Trip to Crete

Christos Kozyrakis

Nicolas Kokkalis

Manolis Katevenis

Social App Platform

FB Android SDK

900 Million Users

Facebook Graph

“Every smile you make,

Every ‘like’ you click,

I’ll be watching you. ”

Big Data

So you never have to search again!

- Big Data Engineer

12 weeks unscented lotion 20 weeks supplements (calcium, magnesium, zinc) 36 weeks scent-free soap, cotton balls, hand sanitizers, washcloths

Big Data

1. Control over our data?

2. What to do with our distributed data?

and Alternatives?

Part 1. Control over our data

Today’s Social Intranets

Loss of control of personal data

Loss of freedom: Intermediated social interactions Not suitable for all apps:

health, finance, corporate, educational

Proprietary social graph

Emergence of a monopoly Loss of competition and innovation

Vision: Social Intranet -> Internet

No single owner

of users’ data or app platform

No need to join the same network

PrPl: Federated Semantic Web, 2008

Friend’s

Butlers

Friend’s

Butlers

Friends’

Butlers

Personal-Cloud Butler

Semantic

Index

OpenID

Manager Data

Manager

Access

Control

Database Query Language

Drop

Box Facebook

home

server Google+

Lessons Powerful architecture

Users don’t want ownership

Users want new features

Users want ease of use

Software is too large, too flaky

Decision

2010: PrPl shelved

2010 Mar: Diaspora project proposed

2012 Mar: Estimated to have 377,538 users

A Federated Social Web

Musubi

Mobile social app platform

Best, new, mobile experience

Common interface to a choice of

Cloud hosting services

• Dropbox

• Facebook

• Google Drive / Google Plus

MuSUBI:

Mobile

Social

UBIquitous

Dodson et al. WWW 2012 Best Student Paper Finalist

Today’s Social Networking

Global Social Graph

TCP/IP

ESP: Secure, disintermediated comm

Egocentric Social Platform (ESP)

Encrypted messages based on Identity-Based Cryptography

IBE: Identity Based Cryptography

Address book based

User contact must be accepted into the address book to display messages

Automatic revocation

Eliminate trust of IBD: thresholding ownership of master keys

public

parameters

Social App Platform

Global Social Graph

FB app TCP/IP

Social Kit for Mobile Apps

Egocentric Social Platform

Social Feeds

Best Mobile Experience

Social Internet: interact with all my friends

Facebook

Google Plus

Phone book

Email accounts

Stanford

Contacts are not uploaded to a 3rd party

Cross-Device Multimedia Group Chat

Status

Pictures

Voice

Links

GPS locations

Information shared only between friends, P2P

Extensible with Social Apps!!

Photo

Editor

Browser Scrabble

Poker

ToDo List

White Board

Videos

Making existing apps social

P2P collaborating, sharing data

Identity Firewall: Social with no data leak

Encrypted Messaging

Testing it in the field ...

30 10-12 year olds like it.

Dogfooding in trip to WWW in Lyon

Monica: Bonjour Paris

TJ: Bonjour madame

Real-time Group Chat w Apps

Shared semantic index

who, what, where, when, how,

access control, notification of new content

Sent 461 messages, <10% worth keeping

Sharing ephemeral data first

Persistent store as backup

Scalability for billions of phones

PrPl: Federated Semantic Web

Friend’s

Butlers

Friend’s

Butlers

Friends’

Butlers

Personal-Cloud Butler

Semantic

Index

OpenID

Manager Data

Manager

Access

Control

Database Query Language

Drop

Box Facebook

home

server Google+

Backing Up the Mobile Semantic Web

Semantic

Index

Database Query Language

Drop

Box Facebook

home

server Google+

PrPl: Federated Semantic Web

Friend’s

Butlers

Friend’s

Butlers

Friends’

Butlers Personal-Cloud Butler

Database Query Language

Drop

Box Facebook

home

server Google+

Best Mobile Experience?

User’s right: not to be snooped!

Best ecosystem for apps

Open competition Best social apps!

Suitable for all apps

Provides the largest social graph

Feed helps apps get viral

Provides social interaction infrastructure

Simple social API

Part 2.

What to do with our distributed data?

Privacy + Marketing Combo

Cloud Service

User Profile

Private Data

in Silos

Ads

DO NOT TRACK

Apps on

Device

User Profile

All My Data

Ads

Use our data

to help ourselves

Paradigm Shift:

More privacy More data Better Ads

Billions phones: Pendulum swings back to distributed

Experience-Infused Apps

Search

Browse

New York Times, Feb. 13, 2011

Idea: Human and socially curated search

Custom Search Engine (CSE)

My Email My Twitter

Extract

Domains

Rank

Domains

Upload to

My CSE

[Nagpal, Hangal, Joyee, Lam, CSCW-2012]

Small User Study (7 Users)

Personalized Search Engine [CSCW 2012]

1

2

3

4

5

Personalized Google

Twitter Email

Ra

ting

Examples

“310” course numbered ME310

“Wow this needed so little typing”.

“iphone5” article from TechCrunch

“Lost check book” user’s bank page

Combining the Search Engines R

atin

g

1

2

3

4

5

Google Google Tweet

Email

Google Tweet Email

Tweet Google

Email

Findings

Experience-Infused Browser

Complement the universal browser

Better privacy

New social media usage

Follow more people,

to populate search engine

Example 2: Personalized Browsing

NYT SCREENSHOT

Experience-Infused Browser

Your

Experiences

Experience-Infused Browser

10101

00110

10100

10101

01010

11101

01010

01010

10101

01010

10100

10101

01010

10010

10010

01010

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000

Your Digital

Archive

HOW IT WORKS

<name, type>

<name, type>

<name, type>

<name, type>

<name, type>

<name, type>

<name, type>

<name, type>

<name, type>

<name, type>

<name, type>

NER

Highlighter

[Hangal, Nagpal, Lam, IUI-2012]

Privacy-Preserving Personalization

All personal data on client – no 3rd party

Very rich profile (but unstructured)

Across different services

Each site does not have to implement

personalization

No setup time

Qualitative Study

9 users, browsing organically for 1 hour

Many interesting stories…

7/9 would like to use it beyond the study

User Comments

“I feel like this almost presents me with a personal synopsis of the (web) page.”

“I like the idea of personalization without giving my data to anyone.”

“After I’ve got used to it, and know what to expect for this site, it’s easy for me to see that there’s no new news on it for me today.”

Findings

Focuses attention to relevant parts of

busy pages

Highlights serendipitous,

forgotten connections from the archive

Summary

Musubi

Beta available on Android Play Store

iPhone soon

Personal data analysis

Personalized browser, search engine

Collaboration: Education, journalists, librarians

Need help

Download Musubi, try it

Help build the best ecosystem