G. Qiu et al. (Eds.): PCM 2010, Part II, LNCS 6298, pp. 583–594, 2010. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 LINK2U: Connecting Social Network Users through Mobile Interfaces Davide De Chiara, Luca Paolino, Marco Romano, Monica Sebillo, Genoveffa Tortora, and Giuliana Vitiello DMI, Università di Salerno, Italy {ddechiara,lpaolino,marromano,msebillo, tortora,gvitiello}@unisa.it Abstract. Nowadays, modern mobile devices have become real personal computers that increase the ability of building/extending existing applications by combining several technologies such as camera, GPS, 3D graphics and permanent Internet connection. The resulting integration of such technologies allows to run complex applications, such as augmented reality and Social Networks. The goal of the present research is to support mobile users’ daily activities, by developing advanced solutions which take into account principles of human- computer interaction and usability. In this paper we propose to exploit the potential of the augmented reality and the ability to “communicate” of social networks to create a mobile social network, where each community user may exploit advanced location based services, such as navigation through a two dimensional map, exploration of an area through a camera mode, and identification of points of interest embedded in an augmented reality environment. Keywords: Augmented reality, social network, mobile devices, geo localization, web services, human computer interaction. 1 Introduction Traditionally, social networks have focused on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities. Much research interest towards new ways to communicate and share information has been encouraged by the witnessed success of social network websites, which are regularly used by millions of people. The technological revolution determined by the advent of ubiquitous IP networks combined with the advanced features of mobile interfaces has motivated a gradual transformation of social networks and of the services they provide towards mobile social communities. The most tangible effect of such revolution is that social network users are now able to connect everywhere and anytime through handheld devices. It has therefore become paramount to study new interaction techniques that suitably exploit mobile technology to convey contextual information about both the physical environment surrounding a user and the (mobile) virtual community characterizing it.