Capturing and visualising Bluetooth encounters

In this paper we describe the development of a platform that enables us to systematically study online social networks alongside their real-world counterparts. Our system, entitled Cityware, merges users’ online social data, made available through Facebook, with mobility traces captured via Bluetooth scanning. Furthermore, we present three prototype visualisations we have developed for representing the captured data. Finally we discuss the comments we have received from users who engaged with our systems.