Abstract Social Internet of Things (SIoT) is an interdisciplinary emerging domain that enables autonomous interaction among social networking and Internet of Things. It provides an unprecedented opportunity to offer new applications and services. However, such an integration brings forth new issues and challenges. In this editorial, we briefly describe the notion of SIoT from the literature perspective. The motivation and challenges of the SIoT are also presented. Moreover, we categorize and classify the fifteen selected articles accepted in this Special Issue which are closely relevant to SIoT and a short summary of each of them is presented.