Measuring Social Relations: Case OtaSizzle

There are different levels of engagement in social relations between persons. Using a single data set for measuring social relations may, however, lead to fallacious results, while using multiple data sets the threat of fallacy can be reduced and the nature of different kind of social relations examined. This paper presents the OtaSizzle research platform for combining multiple data sets and measuring social relations. To present the usefulness of this, the first empirical results of the social network analysis performed with the platform are presented and discussed. Handset-based measurements are used together with data from the OtaSizzle social media services to study the social relations within a group of 20 users. As a result the social networks derived with the different data sources are presented and compared and a number of future research items discussed. According to the measures calculated the social networks derived from the mobile devices are quite similar while the OtaSizzle service network is considerably different, indicating a difference in the online social network and the communication network inside the user group.