Moving Toward Next Generation Social Networks: A Location Based Direction

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		Datebase Group Seminar
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Speaker:	Dr. Xing XIE
		Lead Researcher in the Web Search and Mining Group
		Microsoft Research Asia
		Beijing, China

Title:		"Moving Toward Next Generation Social Networks: A Location
		 Based Direction"

Date:		Monday, 20 April 2009

Time:		11:00am - 12:00noon

Venue:		Room 3416 (near lift nos. 17/18)
		HKUST

Abstract:

Social networking services have become extremely popular in recent years,
especially for young people. However, they are still rooted in the virtual
world. People need to sit behind a desktop computer to upload photos, write
blogs and communicate with friends. On the other hand, the development of
wireless networks and location sensing technologies have made it easier to
track and share personal location information on the fly. By adding a
location dimension, we can bring social networking back from the virtual
world into real life and allow real-life experiences to be shared in a more
convenient way. At Microsoft Research Asia, we are working on various
technologies toward building location based mobile social networks. In this
talk, he will present our recent work on understanding users in such
networks, which is an essential task for providing personal experience and
targeted advertisements.

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Biography:

Dr. Xing Xie is a lead researcher in the Web Search and Mining Group of
Microsoft Research Asia, and a guest Ph.D. advisor in University of Science
and Technology of China. He received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer
Science from University of Science and Technology of China in 1996 and 2001,
respectively. He joined Microsoft Research Asia in July 2001, working on
spatial data mining, location based services, mobile and pervasive
computing. He has served on the organizing and program committees of many
international conferences such as WWW, GIS, CIKM, MDM, and IUI. He is the
chair of WWW 2008 browser and UI track. He has published over 80 referred
journal and conference papers.