Mobile Social Networks: Communication and Marketing Perspectives

Abstract

Social networks are migrating to mobile. Mobile social networks combine community-level interactivity with mobile communications and location-awareness, and hence represent a novel phenomenon with unique properties. Due to the growing business potential of this new trend and its increasing impact on the realm of communications, mobile social networks started to draw scholars' attention. Researchers in computer-mediated-communication have been investigating the phenomenon from a variety of angles, yet marketing literature is falling behind. This chapter aims to review existing academic knowledge on mobile social networks and provide a conceptual framework to study and understand this complex, emergent phenomenon and discuss related future research avenues.