Social Networks - Who has it all ?

When we talk of social networks the name that strikes right in face is Facebook (and mySpace). You do have Orkut and Linked-in, in respective areas. Linked-in made inroads in professional world while Orkut is popular in India and South Asia. And then there are ton of others that come and go on daily basis.

Social Networks is probably the hottest contested topic in last one yr. But its amazing that the largest owners of social networking information are sleeping tight. Obviously the big phone companies such as AT&T , Sprint and T-Mobil have all the data. They know who I call , when and for how long. They know my name and address and the name and address of the person I am calling. I and the the person I call , already use online account management at-least for billing and maintenance.

What if At&T launch a social network where in I could see all the people I called floating as my friends. And then on top of this if we could stick our photographs :-) Of course, some people will cry foul on privacy. They can opt out of this for now, to realize later that nothing really is private in today's world.

Obviously this is not gonna happen. Companies like AT& T can't even capture my address book. It will be too much to expect AT&T set up a social network. So what is the next best that can happen. Some new kid on the block can develop a cool application to pull your cell phone call log into Facebook or Orkut. You might see the options of adding the person you called to your social network(s).

Till then , Social Network is pretty much manual invitation game or at best scavenging email contacts.