Title:
Design and Implementation of a Framework for Profile Migration in the SONIC Online Social Network Federation

Description:

Online Social Network (OSN) Platforms are nowadays mostly closed ecosystems that prevent users from seamless communication between different platforms. Furthermore, seamless migration of a social profile is not allowed. The project SONIC proposes protocols and APIs to facilitate an open, borderless federation of different OSN platforms, types, and architectures. Automated migration of social profiles between platforms is one of the core requirements for a OSN federation.

The main objective of this thesis is to define and implement data formats and protocols for an automated migration of OSN profiles. For that purpose, already existing results of the project SONIC should be assessed, extended, and integrated.

Challenges:

• Define a generic data schema for OSN profile migration
• Design and implement APIs for extracting and importing a complete OSN profile
• Integrate the APIs in at least one OSN network (e.g. Friendi.ca, Diaspora)
• Evaluate the implemented solution

Prerequisites:

• Interest in learning or experience with protocol and API design
• Interest in learning or experience common OSN standards (e.g. OpenSocial, OStatus, or ActivityStreams)
• Sophisticated programming skills in one of the following languages: PHP, Java, Ruby
• Independent working style

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Axel Küpper, Sebastian Göndör, Felix Beierle

Type:  Master or Diploma Thesis

Duration: 6 months