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Will your mobile phone's contact list unseat Facebook as THE source for defining your social graph?
Yesterday, Fred Wilson posted that our mobile device's contact list could serve as an open, accessible source for defining our social graph. Ref: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/building-better-social-graphs-continued.html
That it could be used to publish our social graphs to services we opt into.
Do you buy this? Why? Why not?
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6 Answers
Certainly i will. In fact, it will be a give and take situation, where your contact list is actually managed by your social graph.
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No, because they are linked together.
For me, at least, Facebook was never THE source for defining my social graph - so it can't be 'unseat'ed. It's a part of my social graph (personal friends - past and present) but certainly not all of it nor does it define it.
I don't know that there's one single source - and how we use these various networks is a personal choice that differs by individual.
But I do buy Wilson's point about the mobile phone contact list containing one's 'strong ties', since it's the device that tends to be most 'personal' - i.e. it's with us at most if not all times. So yes, I do believe there's some validity to his statement - it may not define my social graph, but it's at least at the core of most of it.
Also, since I'm an Android user, my mobile phone contact list corresponds directly to my Google Contacts - so for me at least, Gmail is just as much the 'core' as my mobile phone.
My contact list provides a combination of LinkedIn, Plaxo and Facebook contacts because of the types of contacts each of these social networks support. My contact list identifies my inner circle, or strong ties as Chris mentions and I am careful to maintain this coordination across all social networks.
So in answer to the original question, yes my contact list does serve as a source of my contacts but only provides coordination of my social graph. My personal contact list allows and provides a location to combine the tiers and strengths of contacts across all the social networks and supports a single location for me to combine the strengths of each of the networks into one location, my smart phone.
No, your mobile phone's contact list will not unseat Facebook as THE source for defining your social graph. From a social research point of view a phone contact list cannot unseat Facebook because it is not accessible. Although in many cases, especially those that use Facebook minimally or not at all, or make their contacts private, their phone's contact list is more a true record of their social graph, but a person's phone is not public, so it is not possible for it to unseat Facebook.
I think my phone contacts would be a far more accurate representation of me than Facebook as I actually CARE whats on my phone.
Most Facebook accounts around the world are to a greater or lesser extent fabrication and so anyone who thinks they get a 'true' picture of the world from it is sorely mistaken.
That being said, I would not wish my phonebook to be open to anyone as my privacy is important to me.
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