360◦ User Profiling: Past, Future, and Applications

Users in social networks are often encouraged to complete their profile by providing personal attributes such as age, gender, interest, income, etc. Additionally, users are likely to join interestbased groups that are devoted to various topics: “2016 University Graduates”, “Accordions Singapore”, etc. These profiles and groups are often used as a basis for rendering better online services, marketing, and advertisement. However, in practice, the majority of users are reluctant to provide actual personal attributes, while the group participation is often relevant to their friendship connections, rather than interests. As a solution, user profiling at the individual and group level is explored to mine the demography and mobility information of a user. In this paper, we discuss different user profiling approaches on social networks, highlight the challenges, techniques, and future trends. We explain the weakness and strength of these methods and introduce an analytic platform to bridge the gap between social media users, business intelligence and the Big Data.