Visualizing Mobile Networks

A company called Indiro Technologies is beginning to offer a system that enables mobile phone companies to map their call traffic into social networks. Fairly fascinating stuff. The company's site offers a page that hints at another way for telecom companies to value their customers, based not on usage but on connectivity.

This is an interesting twist. The telecom model certainly is interesting. Indira is hinting that, if you identify a certain person as being influential, s/he is more valuable. Assumedly, you would adjust either products or pricing so that your service is more attractive to him/her.

What if you applied this model elsewhere? Imagine if the price of a song on iTunes was based, in part, on my Technorati profile. If I have a proven track record of posting, recommending and influencing music tastes, I might get a better price.

As "influence" becomes a more measurable, trackable number, this approach certainly has hypothetical possibilities.