Integrating and mining virtual communities across multiple Online Social Networks: Concepts, approaches and challenges

Nowadays, virtual communities gather and organize via different means on the Internet. For example, Online Social Networks (OSNs) are providing a new way of doing business for enterprises with their customers and business partners. They can interact with each other on many OSNs building closer relationships than before. In addition, organizations do have more choices to use and infer useful knowledge from these valuable data sources favoring organizational growth. In this regard, management challenges among multiple online social networks must be revealed to provide insights of strategic thinking for organizations. This study shows that current research of multiple online social networks are shifting from Homogeneous OSNs to Heterogeneous OSNs and Social Internetworking Scenarios (SISs) and producing data interoperability, data privacy and security issues among these virtual organizations. An exploration of current applications and unresolved challenges is helpful for the future organizational development of online societies.