Universal Access in the Information Society
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In our increasingly dislocated and mobile society, online social network sites are proving valuable in bridging distances and facilitating interaction and communication. People are spending a significant amount of time at the top social networking websites in order to manage existing relationships with friends, reconnect with old friends, share media and find new contacts that have similar interests. Fulfilling these needs are just as important for elderly people as it is for everyone else, but can become more difficult. Many are no longer at work so they do not have a daily set of activities with the same group of people. This, combined with increasing frailty, can lead to a habit of staying at home, which adds to the feeling of loneliness and isolation. In spite of this need for social contact, elderly people, even those who use the internet, tend to miss out on the benefits of online social networking platforms. Elderly people are keen to maintain contact with the different generations of their family. Many older people have already invested significant time in building contact lists and relationships within the major social networks. Go-myLife has therefore not attempted to set up a new social network but rather a platform from where elderly people can post messages and receive updates and take part in discussions across a variety of platforms, thus bringing existing communities together. In this paper, the authors present a context-aware social networking platform, the "Going online: my social life" platform, which is adapted to the needs of elderly users.