CNET News writers Ina Fried and Michael Kannellos report on Microsoft's TechFest in — Microsoft wants to know who your friends are. They talk about Lili Cheng's 'Inner Circle' concept which maintains, updates, lists, and monitors your top 20 email contacts. Your inner circle — not the people who write to you and often go unanswered, but the people that you reach out to and communicate with most consistently. Lili Cheng says that Inner Circle's set of rules would be based on our behavior.

This article also makes brief mention of Microsoft's 'Swarm' project — "the effort is basically akin to a mailing list for short cell phone messages. A group of friends can subscribe to a list. When someone wants to let the group in on some info, he or she sends a text message to a number that redirects the message to the phone of everyone on the list."

Where is your 'inner circle' most effectively reflected? In your email and instant messaging contacts? On your weblog 'blogroll' or in your news reader feeds? On your cell phone's itemized calls list? In your 'skype' roll? In the maillists or IRC channels you frequent? In the multitudes of YASNS you have joined? In your photo albums — online or offline? A combination of the above? None of the above? All of the above?

Who are the current creators of the 'super' application that will help track our 'inner circles' across all forms of communications — modes and devices? And then how will we control or 'own' these invaluable aggregated snapshots of our most intimate groups?