INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF MOBILE DEVICES IN SOCIAL NETWORKS Péter Ekler 1 , Hassan Charaf 2 PHD Student 1 , Associate Professor 2 Budapest University of Technology and Economics Department of Automation and Applied Informatics 1. ABSTRACT Nowadays Web based social networks are becoming more and more popular. As the functions of social networks are increasing it is reasonable to consider how mobile devices can connect to them. The paper is based on our experiences of implementing a Web based system which functions are available from mobile phones via Web services. A mobile client was also implemented that way the special abilities of the mobile phones could extend the available functionality of the system. The paper describes the architecture of the Web application and the mobile client, discusses the technological background and introduces the minimal requirements for the mobile phones. 2. INTRODUCTION Nowadays more and more people are using different type of mobile devices. Both hardware and software capabilities of mobile phones are increasing in the last decades. Most of the devices are able to create images, videos, is able to play music and other multimedia content. Besides that we can even run complex software on them. As the functions of mobile phones are increasing people spend more time with their devices. Despite the number of mobile phones is increasing, people still use notebooks and desktop computers to read news, forums or watch multimedia content on the Internet. The reasons for that is very complex, however if there would be a system which functions could be reached both from PC and mobile phones then it could get the PC and mobile users closer to each other via the different functions. A typical system for the previously discussed issue could be a social network. A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency. Using mobile phones in social networks is an open area. Nowadays most of the social networks are based on Web technologies. In this paper we would like to investigate how to involve simple mobile phones in social networks. For instance is it possible to reach the main functions of a social network from mobile phones? Can a mobile device add special function to the network? What are the requirements for the device capabilities? To answer these questions, we have experimented with implementing an ASP.NET Web based system which functions are similar to a social network, and a J2ME based mobile client which can reach the functions of the system and adds extra capabilities to it.