WSJ article this morning re: contact networking solutions,WSJ.com - Six Degrees of Exploitation? (the hyperlink won't work unless you have an online account with WSJ). Clay Shirky is quoted, saying that earlier versions of these solutions were too aggressive in forcing people to share info, basically "cracking people's heads open to see what's inside."

Mentions Spoke, Visible Path, but omits Plaxo, that I just wrote about at Knowledge Management magazine, a piece that should be published today.

Does a fairly good job of explaining how Visible Path can automatically determine how familiar you are with a contact:

"Visible Path's "Relationship Mining Engine," for example, considers a contact closer if the employee has the contact's cell-phone number as opposed to just an office number. It also checks to see if a contact regularly responds to the employee's e-mails -- a sign of strong links -- or just receives it. Names on an instant-messenger buddy list are automatically considered strong links. So are repeated face-to-face or telephone meetings that show up in a calendar."