Enabling offline access to Facebook streams on mobile devices

The recent years have witnessed the wild success of social networks and social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Instagram -- indeed, many people rely on these social networks to communicate with their friends, family and community on a day to day basis. Via these sites, users exchange rich media contents, such as video, audio, and images for an enhanced user experience. With the growing popularity of mobile communications, users connect to these social networks using mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) and expect to derive the same experience no matter how and where they connect. It is reported that 93% of Android smartphone users in India use social networks on their smartphones [6]. Another survey, done in Canada, shows that 61% of users access Facebook through mobile devices [2]. These market reports indicate that social media streams, carrying rich content, have become key aspects of how people view information and how society interacts today.