Toward using social media to support ridesharing services: challenges and opportunities

Ridesharing has been attracting increasing attention from both academia and industry. One of the challenges posed by the study of ridesharing is to identify the most valuable information for improving the ridesharing decisions taken by participants. Another challenge is to use harvesting techniques to extract specific types of travel-related information. Many methods have been developed by the community in order to solve these issues. However, due to a lack of information sharing between different transit authorities and the difficulty of identifying subjective perceptions of the experience of ridesharing, understanding and evaluating how social media data might support or obstruct goals for mobility, safety and environmental sustainability in ridesharing is a difficult task. In this survey, we first analyze the literature on ridesharing with a focus on the properties and model of service, and introduce a framework to describe the major components required for a ridesharing service. Then, we illustrate the potential value of information extracted from social media and present the rationale for harvesting travel-related data. Finally, we detail some possible directions and different approaches for using social media data, and highlight their assets and drawbacks.