3pointD.com

Microsoft is getting in on the social networking space as well, announcing late last night [press release] that it’s creating a new start-up in Silicon Valley called Wallop Inc., which is headed by longtime entrepreneur Karl Jacob. Though the Wallop site already has a useless animated cube on it (is there any better Microsoft branding than that?), the description of what’s to be developed there sounds interesting — if not entirely desirable:

Launching later this year, Wallop . . . will introduce an entirely new way for consumers to express their individuality online. For example, today’s social networks have difficulty enabling people to interact in a way similar to the way they would in the real world. . . . Wallop departs from the friend-of-a-friend model common in all social networks today and the root of many of their problems. Instead, Wallop developed a unique set of algorithms that respond to social interactions to automatically build and maintain a person’s social network.

That cube isn’t the only thing typically Microsoft. Me, I don’t want Bill Gates or anyone else for that matter automatically building and maintaining my social network.

Wallop is a Miscrosoft technology being licensed to Jacobs’s start-up via the Microsoft IP Ventures program. I look forward to seeing what the company comes up with in terms of new ways to interact online. But I like to pick my own friends, thank you. This CNet story quotes Jacob as saying that “consumers are remaking the Internet in their own image.” So why not let them? Do I really need Microsoft to tell me who my friends are?