A model for handling multiple social networks and its implementation

Nowadays, users join several on-line social networks (OSNs) so that design and development applications able to work on multiple OSNs is a challenging issue. However, OSNs present relevant differences from both the adopted terminology (similar concepts have different names) and the supported technology (for example, in the APIs provided for data extraction). Consequently, the heterogeneity of OSNs does not allow the design of applications with suitable abstraction with respect to the specific OSNs processed. In this paper, we define a model aimed at generalizing concepts, actions and relationships of existing social networks, which can be exploited as a middleware to implement applications working on multiple social networks.