Broadband Advisor

Your address book is your social network

As is often the case when I write a column like this, I will get several e-mails from the PR departments of various companies telling me they already do all this. Except they don't.

Plaxo got close first, and was a pioneer in letting you nag everyone to update contacts and enabling people to update their contact info in your address book. But although Plaxo has life-streaming and limited social networking features, it's still no LinkedIn or Facebook in terms of being a central social network for real engagement.

Start-ups like DubMeNow are working on the business-card-replacement end of it, and are also working on integration with LinkedIn, Android and iPhone. But they're not even going to launch their public beta until mid-October (and the official launch is scheduled for November 19).

Facebook is working on something in this area, but won't say what. Thursday at the GigaOM Mobilize conference in San Francisco, an audience member pointed out to a panel that a phone's address book in fact is that person's social network. Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya responded with: "That's a great observation. Stay tuned." That sounds to me like Facebook will be announcing something in this area soon.

LinkedIn is partway there, with its contacts functionality. But how do I get people to update their address books? Most of my contacts don't keep all contact information on LinkedIn for some reason. And how do I sync LinkedIn with my phone?

Digsby unifies IM messaging with Facebook and MySpace messages, but doesn't include other social networks, e-mail or other forms of written communication.

Many, many other companies are working on various parts of this system.

The mobile social address book of the future is coming. The bits and pieces of it are already out there, scattered all over the place and being used every day. It's time for the industry to pull together and agree on standards for making mobile social address books a reality.

Somebody call me when that happens -- if you have my new number.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. You can contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com or his blog, "The Raw Feed."