Visualize Social Connections with Mind Mapping?

I just had a great conversation with Kyle Lewis, an Account Representative with MindJet, one of the leading mind mapping platforms for consultants and enterprises. I’ve tried mindmeister, mindomo, xmind and several other platforms but MindJet seems to have the most robust capabilities. My conversation with Kyle re-affirmed that assessment.

Surprisingly, though, neither MindJet nor any of its competitors (to my knowledge, at least) currently offers Social Network *API-driven* Mapping.

Say wuh?

Say this…

Go on over to http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/
Type in the username of someone on twitter you’d like to know more about in terms of their connections. Try chrisbrogan for example. Then, press Start.

Pretty nifty, right? Hat tip to the folks at Asterisq.com.

But here’s what I have a hard time understanding: To my knowledge, there’s not a single mind mapping application out there (mindjet being the best of the best from what I have seen) that is able to tap into the APIs of social outposts like twitter to create these sorts of maps.

Why not?

What if you could automatically create maps like this based off of your linkedin connections?

Or your blog community?

Did I mention Facebook?

How might you use a mapping tool like this that was able to tap into social network APIs?

I’d love to hear your ideas.

As always, I will be listening!

Full Disclosure: Neither VMR nor Hugh Macken is currently affiliated with MindJet or Asterisq.com in any way.

Photo Credit: Social Butterfly, by Prince Mik