THE SOCIAL INTERNET

OF THINGS

The Social Internet of Things

Social Internet of Things (1/2)

Total number of humans in the world: around 7 billions

Expected number of objects: trillions

How to find the right object?

Among humans …

2

Social networks! Why not the same for objects?

The Social Internet of Things

Social Internet of Things (2/2)

Advantages

Navigability*

Scalable

Trustworthiness

3

Reason Humans Things

Become visible Increase popularity Publish information/services

Find resources Find old friends Find information/services

Obtain context information Get filtered information Get environment characteristics

Discover new resources Find new friends Find new services/updated

information

*J. Kleinberg, “The small-world phenomenon:

an algorithmic perspective”

in Proc. of ACM Symposium

on Theory and Computing, 2000

The Social Internet of Things

SIoT - Types of Relationships

4

Parental object relationship

Co-location object

relationship and co-work

object relationship

Ownership object

relationship

Social object relationship

The Social Internet of Things

SIoT - Relational Models (1/4)

5

Communal sharing

Humans/Things

• Behaviors of objects with collective relevance

• Focus on the service offered by the entire swarm

* A. P. Fiske, “The four elementary forms of sociality: framework for a

unified theory of social relations,” Psychological review, vol. 99, 1992.

The Social Internet of Things

6

Objects operate as equals and request/provide information

among them in the perspective of providing IoT services to

users while maintaining their individuality

Humans/Things

Equality matching

SIoT - Relational Models (2/4)

The Social Internet of Things

7

Established between objects of different complexity and

hierarchical levels

•RFID reader and Tags, Bluetooth master and slave

Humans/Things

Authority ranking

SIoT - Relational Models (3/4)

The Social Internet of Things

8

• Working together in the view of achieving mutual benefit

• Participation in this relationship only when it is worth

the while to do so

Humans/Things

Market pricing

SIoT - Relational Models (4/4)

The Social Internet of Things

9

I discovered how to

connect to printer

192.167.131.60

Pavla’s

Mac

Long line through

second exit Via

Roma route Maria’s

car

I got a rare issue

… looking how

to fix it

Efisio’s car

Your operator

network

Free WiFi

Better

coverage

Angela

Mario is at “Il lido”

Luisa is at “Charlie” Disco

Giorgia is here

Michele

I got the highest

energy consumption

in the block

Mauro’s house

1

2

3

4

5

Laura

In Rome the weather

is unexpectedly cold

6 7

The Social Internet of Things

SIoT Components

10

Profiling

Social graph

Social presence

Partici-pation model

Relation control

Service APIs ID Mngt

Profiling

Owner control

Rela-tionship

mngt

Service disco-very

Service compo-sition

Trust-worthi-

ness mngt

Service APIs

Social Network

for Humans*

Social Networks

for Things

*D. M. Boyd and N. B. Ellison, “Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship,” Journal

of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 1, no. 13, 2007.

The Social Internet of Things

SIoT Architecture

11

11

The Social Internet of Things

12/

80

Probability distributions of the minimum path length between a pair of

randomly selected objects in SIoT and random network cases

SOME PUBLICATIONS

The Social Internet of Things (SIoT)–When social networks meet the Internet of Things: Concept, architecture and network characterization, L Atzori, A Iera, G Morabito, M Nitti, Computer Networks, 2012

SIoT: Giving a social structure to the internet of things, L Atzori, A Iera, G Morabito, Communications Letters, IEEE 2011

Making things socialize in the Internet – Does it help our lives?, L Atzori, A Iera, G Morabito, ITU-T Kaleidoscope, 2011

The internet of things: A survey, L Atzori, A Iera, G Morabito Computer Networks, 2010

A Subjective Model for Trustworthiness Evaluation in the Social Internet of Things, M Nitti, L Atzori, R Giru, A Iera, G Morabito, IEEE PIMRC, IoT-CN workshop, 2012