GESONGEN : An Interface for Generating and Visualizing Geosocial Networks

Abstract

The ubiquity of mobile location-aware devices and the proliferation of social networks gave rise to geosocial networks, where users not only form social connections but also perform geo-referenced actions. Examples include traditional social networks with geo-annotated posts, e.g., Twitter, and networks that directly offer geosocial services, e.g., Yelp. However, despite the strong interest by both the industry and academia in geosocial networks, a limited number of datasets are in fact publicly available. To fill this gap, we present GESONGEN, an interactive interface for generating geosocial networks. We built upon a recently proposed generation process which combines independently generated graphs and geospatial data or re-uses existing datasets. GESONGEN can visualize geosocial networks, with different view options, and to modify networks.