Reading a social network analysis textbook, one is struck that all the examples involve rigorous data collection by social scientists with clipboards. Hundreds

Reading a social network analysis textbook, one is struck that all the examples involve rigorous data collection by social scientists with clipboards. Hundreds and thousands of hours of work for a small graph. Modern social networks have given us an abundance of data against which to leverage a backlog of techniques that were previously constrained by manual data collection. Phone companies use this stuff in ways that may be unethical, but it can just as easily be used in ways to empower you to leverage your own network. There are exciting potentials we are just beginning to see.