Can you count your friends? Better yet, can you organize them in a database? There's a lot of buzz about a new breed of software tools that can help people manage their contacts -- or, to make it sound more serious, leverage their social capital. "It's easy to identify candidates these days. The challenge now is selection." At the end of the day we will have private aggregations of data more rich and interconnected and personal than any government ever dreamed of ... and of course this data will be readily available, just as data from credit card companies, merchants and airlines is today. Finally, I have to ask what these tools do to the old, low-tech concept of friendship. In some way, with their numbers and lists and classifications, these services can subtly make a social network into a trophy collection. Technology has made it easier than ever to count your friends -- but that doesn't mean you should. Esther Dyson weighs in on the trends in social networking software. Buying and Selling the Little Black Book | 
