Combining the strengths of the Cloud Computing and Social Network paradigms, the vision of Social Clouds aims to provide a resource sharing mechanism where participants dynamically share and trade resources on the premise of the relationships encoded in a social network. By building upon existing relationships in social networks and the inherent trust that accompanies these relationships, a Social Cloud is able to address one of the most cited obstacles in the adoption of current cloud solutions, the missing trust between Cloud service providers and users. However, as with other computing approaches relying on user participation, incentivisation of potential and existing participants is crucial for the success and sustainability of a Social Cloud. Therefore, an incentive engineering approach is needed and will be discussed in this paper considering all phases of user participation in a Social Cloud in order to provide proper incentives for active user participation and desired user behavior.

1. Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds
A Research Agenda
Christian Haas
KARLSRUHE SERVICE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (KSRI)
KIT – University of the State of Baden-Württemberg and
National Research Center of the Helmholtz Association www.kit.edu

2. Research Agenda
• Motivation
1 • Concept of Social Clouds
• Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds
2 • Relation of Incentive Schemes and Sharing Mechanisms
• Related Work
3
• Research Questions and Methodology
4
2 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

3. How does resource sharing happen today
Scenario:
A user wants to backup personal data, but doesn’t have the required amount of
computational resources/storage
Required: Where to get
these resources?
Buy
servers
Volunteer1,2
Grid
Available:
Cloud
1: Anderson 2002; 2: Stainforth 2002
3 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

4. Existing approaches all have certain shortcomings
Buy
servers Data control Costs, inflexibility
Volunteer Willingness to provide Exchange not necessarily
resources bilateral
Grid Access to (heterogeneous) QoS, user-
resources friendliness, access
Resources available on
Cloud Trust assumptions
demand
None of the above mechanisms meets all requirements. What other
approaches can we consider, e.g. Social Computing?
4 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

5. Social Computing is on the rise
Facebook: Active Users (Millions) FB: Social Graph
700
600
Social 500
400
Network 300
200
Platform 100
0
Aug/ 08
Aug/ 09
Aug/ 10
Jun/ 09
Jun/ 10
Apr/ 09
Apr/ 10
Okt/ 08
Feb/ 09
Dez/ 08
Okt/ 09
Feb/ 10
Dez/ 09
Okt/ 10
Dez/ 10
Social Aspects Social aspects are becoming more important:
in Resource • social sharing of resources
Sharing • business models building upon social relationships
Sharing of Sharing of Sharing of
Storage WLANs Policies
5 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

6. The vision of a social cloud
(Extended) Definition: (based on Chard et al. 2011)
“Social Clouds are a scalable, dynamic and user-centric resource sharing
framework in which computational resources, services and information are
shared amongst members on the premise of the relationships encoded in a
social network.”
Socially-oriented Sharing Platform
Social Clouds enable the sharing of (heterogeneous) resources in a
framework where the social structures infer an implicit level of trust
6 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

7. Incentives play a crucial role in this scenario
Socially-oriented Sharing Platform
Adherence to
Active user
Subscribing (informal)
participation
Agreements
What are users’ Incentives to provide Adherence to trading
incentives to resources agreements
join a SC?
Disincentives to free-ride1 Avoiding “anti-social”
and malicious behavior
1: Hardin 1968
Mechanism Design
Suitably designed (economic) mechanisms are able to provide proper
incentives in order to address incentive issues in all phases
7 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

8. Choice of incentives depends on design
specifications
• Social Computing or Storage Cloud
Application
• Social Research Cloud
Scenario
• Enterprise Social Cloud
Trading/Inter • Volunteer, Reciprocal
Incentive action • Reputation, Trophy
Scheme Mechanism • Posted Price, Auction, Spot Market
• Family, close friends
Relationship
• Colleagues, friends
Type
• Other people, virtual “friend”
8 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

9. Example: Choice of incentives depending on
relationship types
Volunteer
Reciprocal
Family, close friends
Trophy
Posted Price
Auction
Friends, Colleagues
Example:
• Non-monetary
incentives for close
friends
Other People • Monetary incentives for
other people
Different groups have different levels of perceived trust
Choice of interaction mechanism could depend on relationship type
9 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

10. Related Work: Incentive Engineering in other
contexts
Resource Sharing with
Anonymous Networks
social structures
Online photo-sharing
Incentive schemes to provide community3
resources1
Sharing of scientific workflows4
Free-rider problem2
Social Incentives/Preferences5
1: Feldman 2004; 2: Golle 2001 3:Nov 2010; 4: De Roure 2009; 5: Charness 2002
Do not capture social structures Do not explicitly consider
incentive schemes
Research Gap: Explicit need for incentive mechanisms for resource sharing
frameworks with social fabrics
10 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

11. Several Research Questions will be targeted in
future research (1)
Engineering suitable incentives in Social Clouds
What types of incentives do users have in a Social Cloud
context, with respect to participation, sharing and adherence to
agreements?
Are existing mechanisms for resource sharing suitable for Social
Clouds?
How can a mechanism be specifically designed for Social Clouds
in order to foster participation and resource sharing?
Methodology
Theoretical
model Prototype Experiments
11 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

12. Several Research Questions will be targeted in
future research (2)
Addressing strategic user behavior
What are the strategic options for users in a Social Cloud, and how
are they affected by the mechanism used?
Is the Social Cloud mechanism robust against malicious user
behavior, and how can it be extended to address this issue?
Methodology
Theoretical
model Simulation Experiments
12 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

13. Summary and next steps
• Concept of socially-motivated resource sharing
Social Cloud • Use existing (digital) relationships to enhance trading
framework
• Incentives for users to participate, share and refrain
Incentive from “anti-social” or malicious behavior
Engineering • Consider influence of design issues such as application
scenario on incentive scheme
Next steps
• Build a theoretical model of economic and social incentives in a
resource sharing environment
• Analyze user strategies under different trading mechanisms
• Compare theoretical results with findings from simulations and/or
experiments
13 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu

14. Thank you for your attention!
Questions?
Feel free to contact us
Christian Haas, ch.haas@kit.edu
Simon Caton, simon.caton@kit.edu
Christof Weinhardt, weinhardt@kit.edu
14 22.05.2012 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds Karlsruhe Service Research Institute
www.ksri.kit.edu