Opportunistic networks are one of the most promising evolutions of the traditional Mobile Ad Hoc Networks paradigm. Communications in an opportunistic network rely on the mobility of the users: each message is handed over from node to node, making hop-by-hop decisions to select the node that is better suited for bringing the message closer to its destination. Algorithms exploiting social-awareness are emerging as one of the most efficient categories of forwarding algorithms. However we are currently lacking analytical models able to characterize the performance of social-aware forwarding in opportunistic networks. In this paper we start to fill this gap by proposing an analytical model for the expected number of hops and the expected delay experienced by messages when delivered in an opportunistic social-aware fashion. The model is then used to characterize how the expected delay experienced by messages varies with the different social structures in the network of the users. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.