PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

From the perspective of individual users, social networking platforms (SNPs) are meant to reflect their social relationships. SNPs should provide feedback allowing users to exploit the information they have entered. In reality, however, most SNPs actually hide the rich social network constructed by the users in their databases behind simple user interfaces. These interfaces reduce the complexity of a user's social network to a text-based list in HTML. This article presents results from a user study showing that 3D visualizations of social graphs can be utilized more effectively – and moreover – are preferred by users compared to traditional text-based interfaces. Subsequently, the article addresses the problem of deployment of rich interfaces. A social graph application for Facebook is presented, demonstrating how WebGL and HTML5/X3D can be used to implement rich social applications based on upcoming web standards.