The disclosure generally relates to Internet of Things (IoT) device social networking, and in particular to an IoT device publish-subscribe messaging model and automatic IoT device social network expansion. For example, IoT devices from different networks may publish status data that relates to certain topics, wherein the published status updates may be managed in a distributed manner at each IoT network. Furthermore, IoT devices interested in published data can subscribe to data relating to certain topics, which may be used to dynamically adjust actions that the subscribing IoT devices may take. Furthermore, IoT devices can employ common social networking capabilities (e.g., refer, follow, like, publish, subscribe, etc.) to interact with other IoT devices and find relevant information from other IoT devices that can be used to improve performance and effectiveness.