The Composition and Use of Modern Mobile Phonebooks
Frank R. Bentley, Yingyu Chen · 2015
Over the past decade, the mobile phonebook has evolved from a relatively short list of people that one calls and texts to a many-hundred person list of aggregated contacts from around the web. This is happening at a time when an increasing number of mobile applications are relying on the mobile phonebook to create one's social network in their services. Through a large-scale study of the phonebooks of 200 diverse participants, containing 65,940 contacts, we set out to understand today's mobile contact lists. Our participants reported that they did not recognize the names of 29% of their contacts and we found that the most frequently contacted five contacts represent greater than 80% of all calls and text messages with phonebook contacts. We conclude with implications for the design of mobile applications that rely on phonebook data.