Microsoft Embedded Social

Several applications use Embedded Social to drive user engagement in-app and in-context.

OneBusAway

OneBusAway (opens in new tab) is an open source platform for real-time transit information.  With a dedicated following of 75k+ daily active users, the OneBusAway Android application enables users to see where busses are in real-time and receive notifications if they need to go to the bus stop early.  Data provided to OneBusAway is provided by transit agencies at a best-effort quality; there are gaps in the data and some useful metrics that are not collected.  OneBusAway needed a way to fill those gaps and provide a richer set of data than supplied by transit agencies such as when all the accessible seating is filled or whether there is remaining bike capacity.  OneBusAway uses the Embedded Social Android SDK to expose user profiles and comments on bus stops and routes to crowd source that information; transit riders can discuss bus rides in real-time.  The Android SDK allows OneBusAway to reuse pre-built assets and customize them to fit the application’s look and feel.  Embedded Social functionality is built right into the application’s navigation drawer so collaboration is just a button press away.

Remix3D

Remix3D was a Microsoft product, shipped with Windows 10, which enabled users to share and modify 3D images.  As a platform built around the idea of sharing and collaboration, Remix3D needed a way to drive meaningful user interactions. They utilized the server-to-server API functionalities exposed by Embedded Social to enable a rich social experience with user profiles, likes, comments, and followers.  Remix3D wrapped their own user interface around the Embedded Social API creating a completely seamless end-user experience for their millions of customers.  The Embedded Social service had no outages for the duration of Remix3D, even under the most intense real and artificial workloads.

 

Microsoft Academic

Microsoft Academic is a search engine designed to utilize natural language processing and semantic inference to find academic knowledge quickly.  Microsoft Academic used Embedded Social to add collaborative experiences to the site to help fill their need for better context around academic publications through user engagement.  Researchers could comment on others’ work or ask questions of an author to gain a deeper understanding of the topic.  The Embedded Social APIs enabled Microsoft Academic bring this knowledge transfer to a larger scale; from academic conferences to the world wide web.

Conference Applications

Several academic conferences (ACM MobiSys 2016, ACM MobiCom 2016, ACM HotMobile 2017, Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2016) created mobile applications for their events and used Embedded Social’s Java API client library to enable in-app communication between attendees.  With the primary application focus being user interaction, Embedded Social was a perfect fit.  Embedded Social features enabled conference attendees to discuss panels in real time, provide meaningful feedback to the program chairs, and most importantly, connect with researchers who share similar interests.  Embedded Social in these conference applications enabled a more interactive experience at the events and, hopefully, enriched the greater academic community by inspiring new collaborations.