Who should partner with whom for reality mining?

Reality mining is according to MIT is “the collection of machine-sensed environmental data pertaining to human social behavior. This new paradigm of data mining makes possible the modeling of conversation context, proximity sensing, and temporospatial location throughout large communities of individuals. Mobile phones (and similarly innocuous devices) are used for data collection, opening social network analysis to new methods of empirical stochastic modeling.”

We know that every time you search (text, image, video), you give Google some value, you give even more value when you click on a result.  From each search and click Google ‘learns’ and increases it knowledge and value.  Google doesn’t need you name or address to do this, but with Picasa facial recognition, oddly enough they do know what you and your family look like. However android opens up the opportunity to gain all the mobile operator data as well.

Mobile operators know who you are and where you live and from your calling pattern who your friends are or who you work with.  With location aware devices, they know your location at all time and as devices increasingly become packed with sensors, they could have more data.

Facebook and Twitter know your extended social network and who influences you and who you influence.

Apple knows everything and what music you and your friends like.

So who should partner with who and if they did would it create any value for the user. Lets assume that Apple will do their own thing and will not partner with anyone.

Google + Mobile operator = could be interesting and should be a power play in terms of the value of the data that they bring.  Google wins though as it has the ability to take the analysis and deliver the value.  Operators have data but no real means of using it.  Google can buy operator data.  No partnership.

Google + Facebook = Both can get data and both can deliver value. Facebook knows who you influence and who influences you. This is new value and not worth giving up at present. No partnership

Mobile operator + Facebook = would be interesting if they both focussed on value and what data they have and how they could create new value.  Facebook could buy operator data pattens, but probably could get the same data from different means.  No partnership

We may have to wait for a new start up to solve this one.