PeopleAggregator.com - open identity standards!!!

[sbarky]

As per TechCrunch.com

Perhaps we should think about adding this into Pligg!!!

PeopleAggregator is the product of 3 years of self funded work by Marc Canter to bridge the gap between all the online social networking services available and move the industry towards a standards-based place of collaboration.

Here’s how it works. PeopleAggregator.net will be a fully functioning online social network in and of itself, but it will share information with other services through common identity standards for our profiles and through APIs (application programming interfaces) for our writing, multimedia and contacts.

Perhaps most important, PeopleAggregator will also provide new social networks with hosted software and later next month will offer downloads of the software for organizations who prefer to host it themselves. Licenses will be free for nonprofits and will cost commercial ventures a one-time sum after they successfully monetize the system.

What this means is that it will be easy to come and go from new social networks, instead of being locked in to one just because you’ve put the time and energy into using your account there. Instead of being at the mercy of one centralized database and service, if Canter’s vision succeeds then countless social networks will proliferate with unique styles and function but with interoperability.

You can currently log in to PeopleAggregator with a LiveJournal or Flickr ID and cross post automatically to LiveJournal, Xanga and any other system that uses the Blogger, Atom or Metaweblogs APIs. Microsoft recently announced the renaming of its new open identity standard, CardSpace, and that will be one of many identity standards supported by PeopleAggregator. Canter expects AOL, Yahoo and Beebo to get on board soon - MySpace will be the hard one, he says.

[3dKiller]

instead of being locked in to one just because you’ve put the time and energy into using your account there. Instead of being at the mercy of one centralized database and service

This is exactly why I hope this fails.

MySpace will be the hard one, he says.

Why would MySpace give up its customers, or any other company for that matter? Our customers bring us money... if we give them up, what are we left with? Why would I want to make it easy for my customers to go and do business somewhere else? How is this good for me?

This is just like the TypeKey idea. It sucks, and there is no way to turn it off once you've used it. I really hope Pligg doesn't do this, if they do - I'm gone.

[sbarky]

Originally Posted by 3dKiller

This is exactly why I hope this fails.



Why would MySpace give up its customers, or any other company for that matter? Our customers bring us money... if we give them up, what are we left with? Why would I want to make it easy for my customers to go and do business somewhere else? How is this good for me?

This is just like the TypeKey idea. It sucks, and there is no way to turn it off once you've used it. I really hope Pligg doesn't do this, if they do - I'm gone.

3dkiller, I understand why you are worried but on the other hand don't you think that if you offer a unique product, people would actually come to your site from other sites because the ease of portability. The sword has two edges and in this case it cuts both ways.

The other less drastic alternative would be all the pligg based sites can have a common identity standard, so that members can roam between sites as they please. It would be an excellent way to group together and fend off the likes of the new Digg with ever more Topics (eg: world & business) and also Netscape's new site. Not to mention Snap and Wikio and countless others. I do not know about anyone else, but I feel this is getting crowded. Lets fight fire with fire and offer more to our readers!

The last option would be to give pligg sites the choice of using an open identity standard or keep them closed. I am willing to bet that all the sites that group together as a team also crosslinking each other kind of like a blogroll, will rise together and in no time at that.