An approach is provided for discovering proximity-based and/or location-based services over an ad-hoc network. A request to share at least one content item from at least one device is determined. Further, one or more compressed representations of the at least one content item are generated, where the one or more compressed representations include at least one link for retrieving the at least one content item. Furthermore, the one or more compressed representations are broadcast in one or more broadcast messages over an ad-hoc network to one or more other devices.