Social media is now ubiquitous on the internet, generating both new possibilities and new challenges in information analysis and retrieval.This comprehensive text/reference examines in depth the synergy between multimedia content analysis, personalization, and next-generation networking. The book demonstrates how this integration can result in robust, personalized services that provide users with an improved multimedia-centric quality of experience. Each chapter offers a practical step-by-step walkthrough for a variety of concepts, components and technologies relating to the development of applications and services.Topics and features:Provides contributions from an international and interdisciplinary selection of experts in their fieldsIntroduces the fundamentals of social media retrieval, presenting the most important areas of research in this domainExamines the important topic of multimedia tagging in social environments, including geo-taggingDiscusses issues of personalization and privacy in social mediaReviews advances in encoding, compression and network architectures for the exchange of social media informationDescribes a range of applications related to social mediaResearchers and students interested in social media retrieval will find this book a valuable resource, covering a broad overview of state-of-the-art research and emerging trends in this area. The text will also be of use to practicing engineers involved in envisioning and building innovative social media applications and services.