3 have always innovated; as evidenced by having their slogan ‘changing mobile forever’ as their lead message. It is this that saw them forge into the social networking space in partnership with INQ around this time last year, a move that was well received. However, both Orange and Vodafone are, as UKGadgeteer reports, “preparing some social networking software to improve their customer experience…”

Orange has ‘Social Life’ (which you can read about courtesy of Mobile Europe) that will aggregate activity from Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. It will be accessible through the operator’s portal, Orange World.

The third player in this battle is Vodafone with ‘Vodafone People’. TechCrunch covered this with insider videos, which have since been removed, but there is still plenty to get your teeth into, “Vodafone is now aiming squarely at integrating social networks, an area which the 3 network has pushed heavily to date. Vodafone People has ‘active contacts’, similar to the old Jaiku format and seems to be taking on INQ Mobile by syncing contacts on multiple devices and details with Facebook. In other words, Vodafone appears spooked by Three’s focus on social networking.”

As UKGadgeteer concludes “it seems these three networks are going to be going head to head to claim superiority in the Social Networking space.” Is there space for all of them? How will it all pan out? We’d love to hear your thoughts…