Social monitoring and social analysis in internet of things virtual networks

The integration of social networking concepts into Internet of Things systems is a burgeoning topic of research that promises to support novel and more powerful applications. In this paper we present the social approach that the COSMOS project introduces in order to achieve enhanced services like discovery, recommendation and sharing between Things enriched with social properties. We investigate how typical notions and modes of interactions of social networking can be extended to the networks of Things, providing a Social Internet of Things platform, and we discuss two main components supporting the socialization of Things: Social Monitoring and Social Analysis. The first one involves all the main tools and techniques needed for the monitoring of the social properties of the Things, whereas Social Analysis is used for the extraction of their complex social characteristics, as well as models and patterns regarding their behavior and relations between them.