Yesterday I was in a panel session discussing mobile social networks (I will post my slides on slideshare soon.)
I mostly covered how to ‘mobilize’ social networks - and the ways are perhaps more than we think. My opening ‘in passing’ point was to mention how mobile networks are already the biggest and most well used ’social networks’ on the planet - they just don’t look like Facebook, or any other web-based social graph - and - operators don’t seem to know they exist, much like the users. We’ve been carrying around address books in our pockets (mobiles) for a decade now - and they mostly remain inert and massively underutilised. This is a point that my great friend Tomi Ahonen was making before SNs existed. I remember how he used to talk about data-mining the social graph in call records as a source of value for operators.
The web is probably headed towards a new architectural horizon that puts the social graph at its centre, as promoted by Berners-Lee himself, suggesting that perhaps we replace WWW with GGG - Giant Global Graph.
When FOAF was first posted as an idea, I got all excited and used to go around trying to convince operators to use this as the basis for network address books, also back when I thought P2P computing was going to become huge and the most likely architecture for mobile computing networks. I was convinced that an ‘FOAF-centered architecture’ would underpin a whole new class of services, such as socially-enabled MMS (back when we were still trying to think of uses for MMS - hey, I was advocating MMS for social networking from the start - here’s an old posting on a very old blog - still a relevant idea).
The web is basically headed towards a new architectural axis, which is the social graph. Soon, social networks shall be open and formed as part of the open ‘Web 2.0 infrastructure’, or even IP infrastructure, not stuck in the databases of Facebook or Linkedin etc. Given that mobile networks are already the biggest social networks on the planet, it seems that operators are well positioned (theoretically) to do something in this space, taking mobile to a whole new level. I think that social networking should/could become what IMS has been waiting for. Mobile networks should be all about mobiles as connectors, not phones.
With the advent of social APIs, like Social Graph API, and the potential to store browser data offline (e.g. Google Gears) - it is now entirely possible to move the address book into the Web 2.0 domain in a useful fashion (i.e. not the pedantic SyncML approach) and support all kinds of interesting SN possibilities. It would be a ‘no-brainer’ to mash this with the real-time capabilities of IMS.
There is still a huge opportunity here to transform the usefulness of mobiles to a whole new level - across the board - not just for iPhone users 
If only mobile operators knew of the existence of social graphs - their own.
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7 responses so far ↓
1 Martin // Jul 10, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Yep, I’m certainly aware of of the **value** of datamining customers behaviour and usage whilst on the network.
The analysis of (who/where/when you call, when & how much you SMS/IM/MMS/email, what/when you browse, what/when you download etc..) can lead to an incredibly rich contextual profile ripe for mashing into exisiting and new mobile services - and not just from a mobile address book or social networking perspecitve…
Getting that data exposed in the right way is trickier (user privacy / security / volume of data / trends etc..) … my2p .. Martin
2 Paul G // Jul 10, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Thanks Martin. Yes, MNOs have been mining the data for years, as did AT&T even earlier (and subject to various controversies as to who owned the data - the PLMN or the users). I should have made it clearer that the social graph is mapped across our address books (the call records mostly reflect those vectors) and that it is this goldmine that operators have been sitting on without realising that this is indeed a social network. By realising, I don’t mean being cognisant of this fact. I mean converting it into a meaningful and useable part of the ‘mobile 2.0′ infrastructure, allowing a host of other mobile services to be socially enabled. In all the various ‘open API’ experiments supported by operators, I have not seen a Social Graph API.
Like most of the “GSM experience,” the address book has remained peripheral to the main event, which is telephony, because in the world of telephony, the state diagram begins and ends with the call being placed, not the number being dialled, never mind the number being looked up. Of course, the distraction, as it were, was the SIM card. Portability was taken too literally and, ironically, meant that address books remained even more static due to their association with a “sensitive” part of the MO apparatus. God forbid that we take this “sensitive” data and put it into a network, not without defining a lot of extra paraphernalia first (i.e. the IMS/XDMS labyrinth).
Exposing the address book might have various privacy/security issues, but Web 2.0 already does this in other ways (e.g. Plaxo, etc.) Once we can store web data locally (e.g. Google Gears) then we can seriously rely on web-hosted address books, thus removing the operator from the address book consideration going forward.
That said, it clearly isn’t that tricky doing it via ‘mining’, otherwise known as ‘indexing’ which is exactly what Google is doing with Social Graph API - mining the web for social connections. I dare say that a good deal of a typical MNO’s customers will turn up in that graph - so the genie is already out of the bottle.
Of course, I know that you get this stuff - are you feeling the frustration yet?
3 david cushman // Jul 10, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Paul. Really pertinent for me at the mo. taking my mobile-based social network with me into the cloud would be ideal (ie yes, I’m facing that 18monthly transfer of address book, diaries, widgets et all from one phone to the next…) :/
4 Martin Wirz // Jul 11, 2008 at 9:21 am
They don’t know it? Well, Vodafone bought ZYB…
The problem is how to implement this on today’s devices.
5 Paul G // Jul 11, 2008 at 9:30 am
Thanks Martin. MNOs buy all kinds of companies -some guy in ventures thought it was a good idea, most likely. The problem you mention is the point - had MNOs understood the strategic potential of the address book as a social network enabler, we wouldn’t have this problem. UMTS/GSM remains a telephony-centric architecture.
6 McGuire’s Law » Blog Archive » Business Observations: July 2008 Edition // Jul 11, 2008 at 11:26 am
[...] Like McLuhan’s fish - operators haven’t discovered social networks…their own, that is… [...]
7 Martin Wirz // Jul 11, 2008 at 3:51 pm
At the moment it all comes down to one key point: MNOs do not want to loose control and do not want to become a ’stupid data pipes’. MNOs think old-fashioned telco-like and don’t realize that they are not able to stop the shift towards a data-centric architecture.
But I guess I don’t have to tell you this.
MNO’s should realize that they have to try to monetize services where they have an advantage over the others. (traffic analysis, reality mining, location etc)
I believe the social phonebook will be huge. But it will only work if different forces work tother. Also hardware producer have to support this. However, Nokia who wants to become a service provider. They want to offer this service themselfes. Gonna be difficult to find a common base…
When two people quarrel, a third rejoices!
So, i bet 1000$ on a fPhone!
Who’s in?
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