Here’s an interesting question for you to ponder over the weekend.
If, as GigaOm and other commentators suggest:
Facebook’s core asset is its social graph — a diagram of people and their connections.
The Dawn of Facebook’s People-organized Web
Why don’t the Telcos simply put a real-time Business Intelligence layer on their landline, broadband and mobile phone networks, remap their network data records and then publish the aggregated data as their localised social graph?
After all their network data (i.e. call) records are an infinitely more accurate record of people and their connections than Facebook attempts at “playing the game”.
The same thing goes for Twitter and SMS.
If the world’s Telcos pooled, mapped, shared and mined their network data records at a global level they would make both FaceBook and Twitter look irrelevant in terms of their audience size, accuracy and quality of connections, and in the volume of activity (i.e. messages).
So what’s the answer? After all the Telcos could have done this 15 years ago. Is the right answer FaceBook’s the core asset, its social graph, is not worth the effort, or is it the privacy laws that restrict Telcos from repurposing their data or is it simply the Telcos can’t see the “wood for the trees?”
After all, adding a real time business intelligence technology layer that would add $1 to $10 Billion to their market value must be worth at least a strategic plan or two? Plus it would help them to improve their customer billing 
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