Tata Teleservices Limited and IIT Bombay Center for Excellence in Telecom (TICET) has announced the launch of a rather interesting Mobile Social Network Platform which enables telecom operators to develop personalized applications and send targeted promotions to users within the network. It was launched by Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal yesterday. What is interesting about it is that it tries to make the promotions more relevant to the user, by analyzing the user's demographic profile, call records, location, buddy list and other areas of interest, which the Social Network picks up from the consumer's usage patterns. In a sense, it adds a layer of information based on mobile usage patters, on top of already available demographic information and social connections. According to TICET, the algorithm mines call detail records available and searches for patterns in interactions between various users. These patterns, along with the information about the set of applications that a user is currently using - and what his friends like/dislike - are then analyzed to narrow the choice down to a specific set of users with similar interests. The assumption is that anything that is popular in a user’s "cluster" has a high probability of being liked by users in that cluster, and thus, can be recommended to them. Applications For example, the application can send an advertisement of a Restaurant in form of an SMS, at lunch time, depending on the location, demographic profiles and preferences of his friends, on the social network or send the user a…
