Social Relationship Identification: An Example of Social Query

Every moment, millions of people worldwide are communicating and sharing content online. We express ourselves online to enrich existing relationships and establish new relationships that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to develop offline. Such actions are reflected in a corresponding set of digital social artifacts, such as blog posts, emails and status updates. We are accustomed to thinking of collections of digital artifacts online as repositories of information. What if we are now searching collections of digital social artifacts that reflect people´s online relationships with one another and aspects of their lives? Are standard search methods sufficient? How do we want to query such data? We contend that general queries may have both informational and social components to them. We define social queries as queries about social attributes and behaviors that identify individuals, relationships or groups exhibiting such characteristics. To develop a deeper understanding of social query, we focus on the specific task of social relationship identification. In the context of two scenarios, we examine the challenges posed by the task, review an initial realization of social relationship identification and present a way forward to address the general task.