Identity Cleft
Digital Identity is a topic that seems to be cropping up more and more these days. Of course, for me, it's almost like a game of Where's Waldo - until you know you're looking for him, you can't see it. Readers of this site have long known I've raised many issues with the first round of social networking sites (SNS 1.0). I've been sitting idly for some time now thinking about how the next generation (SNS 2.0) will try and approach those problems.
I'm almost done sitting still ;) We'll be announcing our project sooner than later and it will hopefully solve many of these problems with one clean and simple solution. But before we get ahead of ourselves, I thought this post that Charlie O'Donnell made a couple of months ago (which I only discovered by accident today) really hits the frustration on the head:
If you open up the API, you can let people develop stuff on top of the LinkedIn backend. So, the Sportsvite folks can choose not to show your professional resume, but instead throw on a rating on how hard you can throw. Currently, aside from the attempts at FOAF, I haven't seen anyone open up their system and attempt to be the profile engine for everyone, but I think LinkedIn has the best shot. I don't think you can just do this with a closed, LinkedIn.com offering. You need NYSSA to choose you as their front end provider and Fordham and whoever else wants a "Powered by LinkedIn" database. Until then, LinkedIn is just going to be Y.A.F.P. and we're still going to have to log on and put our stuff into these clunky pseudo address books.
Now, I'll just say that I don't think LinkedIn is going to do it just yet. There's too many parameters that are potentially out of whack with trying to let too many external entities tie onto the backs of LinkedIn's system. For example, LinkedIn doesn't want anyone re-kindling old high school flames inside their network (can it happen, yes. is it frowned upon, yep).
Again this goes back to the database. It's been optimized for one type of thing. We benefit because that gives us a wonderful ability to search and find new things that are relevant. The sacrifice, of course, is that you have to pigeon hole who you are in each of these places.
One of the trackbacks on that post sums it up nicely:
Overall, this is a big problem I have with a lot of the PIM service sites. LinkedIn (contacts), Trumba (events), Gmail (email) - each of these is really good at what it does, but they all prevent me from being able to synch up this same information and take it with me. Because of that, I end up either a) using competing services that are not as feature rich, but allow me to use my data more efficiently (yahoo has an online calendar that can synch with my palm), or b) forgoing either web or palm access to the information.
It's a trade-off, I know. For the next 2 months, it will have to do ;)