Efficient techniques for time-constrained information dissemination using location-based social networks

Social networks have undergone an explosive growth in recent years. They constitute a central part of users' everyday lives as they are used as major tools for the spread of information, ideas and notifications among the members of the network. In this work we investigate the use of location-based social networks as a medium of emergency notification, for efficient dissemination of emergency information among members of the social network under time constraints. Our objective is the following: given a location-based social network comprising a number of mobile users, the social relationships among the users, the set of recipients, and the corresponding timeliness requirements, our goal is to select an appropriate subset of users so that the spread of information is maximized, time constraints are satisfied and costs are considered. We propose LATITuDE, our system that investigates the interactions among the members of the social network to infer their social relationships, and develop scalable dissemination mechanisms that select the most efficient set of users to initiate the dissemination process in order to maximize the information reach among the appropriate receivers within a time window. Our detailed experimental results illustrate that our approach is practical, effectively addresses the problem of informing the appropriate set of users within a deadline when an emergency event occurs, uses a small number of messages, and consistently outperforms its competitors.