Too Many Choices, Too Much Content

Too Many Choices

However, there are certain areas we've noticed that seem to be the biggest
sources of conflict as of late. In these areas, several companies are clamoring
to be the winner of the space, releasing duplicate or similar products,
constantly adding new features, and generally trying to one-up their competitors
in an effort to come out on top. When there are several companies doing the same
thing, it gets confusing for the average user and time-consuming for the early
adopters who play with everything. In the end, the hope is that one great
service would come out on top, but that's hardly ever the case. We're already on
MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, and LinkedIn because there's no one winner for
social networks...are we going to have to use all these newcomers battling it
out, too?

Drowning in Awesomeness

The double-edged sword that comes with keeping abreast of all the latest
developments in technology means that we're always aware of the latest and
greatest applications and services to try...but it also means that we've tried
all of them. Unlike the average user, who doesn't even bother creating
a Facebook profile until several of their friends cajole them into doing so,
technology early adopters are the first to sign up and create profiles on every
service that launches.

The Battle of the Lifestreams

There's MyBlogLog's
lifestream, FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm and even Facebook's
attempt at lifestreaming, which involves integrating a handful of services
into users' Mini-Feeds and News Feeds. Too much? You
betcha. Although FriendFeed is getting buzz, even it doesn't offer a way to
really filter the info it displays. Sure, the "filter
by service" Greasemonkey script can help narrow down content and the Friends & Groups script can help sort
your friends into groups of your own choosing, but we shouldn't have to rely on
a Firefox
add-on to make our apps work for us. And while FriendFeed may be one service
(besides Twitter, of course) that internet
addicts can't live without, it still has a way to go to cross over to the
mainstream user, especially if Facebook starts offering similar integration.

The Battle of the Mobile Social Networks

This one will really surprise those not following the mobile
networking space closely. When researching mobile network up-and-comer Brightkite,
I stumbled upon a slew of mobile networks already competing in the space.

There's MocoSpace, Friendstribe, Hobnobster, Dodgeball, Zyb, mig33, Mobiluck, MeetMoi, JuiceCaster, Loopnote, Rabble, Wadja, Treemo, groovr, flagr, Lime
Juice, Loopt, and Next2Friends, to name just a few. There are,
in fact, many, many more. Some focus on texting, some on sharing images, others
on geo-tagging, and others on traditional social networking. They're all acting
like the mobile web is the wild west and if they can just get there first they
might have a shot at winning.

However, who wants to bet that the mobile networks everyone ends up using are
the ones who aren't pretending that the mobile web is some different web
altogether? Even more likely winners are the mobile versions of MySpace and Facebook, where all your friends already
exist.

Alright everybody, I’ve tried at least 10 of these, and I
was going to go on a site by site basis and rank each one, but to be quite
honest there are too many different factors involved that this post would’ve
been 5+ pages long, so here it is, my list…





1. 8Hands
   
2. Ex.plode.us
   
3. Fuser
   
4. HypeIt
   
5. Minggl
   
6. MyLifeBrand
   
7. Naymz
   
8. OtherEgo
   
9. Profilactic
   
10. Profileomat
    
11. Profilefly
    
12. Profilelinker
    
13. Snag
    
14. Socialnetwork.in
    
15. Socialurl
    
16. Spokeo
    
    
17. Tabber
    
    
18. Upscoop
    
19. Zoolit



COMMENTERS! Please help choose the top 5 of the following
Social
Network
Aggregator Sites by basing your votes on the following criteria:

What makes Spokeo compelling, at least initially, is that it is dead-simple
to set up. In one fell swoop Spokeo can ingest all of your contacts from Gmail,
Yahoo, or Hotmail, and then go out to the 30+ sites it monitors and bring back
any new content from people in your address book. I tried this with my Gmail
account, and it built up a friend reader with more than 500 contacts in less
than three minutes. Before, this was a laborious process on Spokeo. You had to
add each friend’s blog or feed one by one. (In comparison, FriendFeed lets you suck in your Facebook
friends, but only the ones who are also FriendFeed users—plus each member must
specify which sites he wants to expose to others.

Data
Portability is working to help make that happen through consensus driven


policies
and procedures. In essence, data portability embraces the Decentralized


Me, but
lets users re-centralize it wherever they please.

Frankly, not enough people know much about DataPortability yet. That will
start to change, as founder Chris Saad is starting a road show presentation to
talk at a high level about what he’s trying to accomplish. Some big
partners are joining, even if just in spirit so far.

Ultimately, Data Portability is to the Centralized Me (all your stuff) as
OpenID is to identity (your literal identity). And just as the big players are
sort of supporting/exploiting
OpenId to maintain their user accounts, they will also support/exploit Data
Portability to remain the place users consider the Centralized Me.

Loic Le
Meur sort of summed it all up tonight
in a blog post where he says that we grew used to having a Centralized Me in the
days before all these services popped up, starting in 2004 and spreading since
then. That Centralized Me was the blog. Then we grew used to having a
Decentralized Me - your stuff was literally everywhere. Go here for photos, here
for the blog, here for videos, and here for bookmarks. Robert Scoble today is
sort of the quintessential Decentralized Me - his stuff is everywhere, and he
seems to love the chaos.

What Loic wants, and I think other people will want it too, is a place that
they control where this information is aggregated. That may be right back at the
blog for some people. For others it may be Facebook (who
understands this fully). Wherever a person considers their home turf is
where they’ll want all this data.

Loic
Le

Meur

sort of
summed it all up tonight

in a blog
post where he says that we grew used to having a Centralized Me in the


days
before all these services popped up, starting in 2004 and spreading
since

then. That
Centralized Me was the blog. Then we grew used to having a

Decentralized
Me - your stuff was literally everywhere. Go here for photos, here


for the
blog, here for videos, and here for bookmarks. Robert Scoble today is


sort of
the quintessential Decentralized Me - his stuff is everywhere, and he


seems to
love the chaos.

What Loic
wants, and I think other people will want it too, is a place that

they
control where this information is aggregated. That may be right back at
the

blog for
some people. For others it may be Facebook (

who


understands
this fully

).
Wherever a person considers their home turf is

where
they’ll want all this data.

Today at the Mobile World Congress in Spain, Yahoo announced a mobile app
called oneConnect that will be available in
the second quarter as part of the upcoming release of Yahoo
Go 3.0. I have not seen a demo of this myself, but it sounds like a
much-needed integration of messaging and social apps. OneConnect will pull
together contacts from your mobile phone, Yahoo address book, and social
networks, including:

Bebo
Dopplr
Facebook
Flickr
Friendster
Hi5
Last.fm
LinkedIn
Myspace
Twitter

You will be able to see whether your contacts are online, recent messages,
status updates, uploaded photos, and other activity streams for each one. Of
course, you will also be able to send them messages via e-mail, IM, and SMS. The
mobile app will save SMS and IM conversations as a single thread, even if you
are texting and the other person is using Yahoo Messenger. The app also supports
AIM, MSN Messenger, and Google Talk.

A feature called “Pulse” will give you the most recent updates of all your
contacts across all the social networks it monitors. You’d see, for instance,
that your girlfriend just added a photo to Flickr, your business partner just
updated his Facebook page to say he landed in London, and your brother just sent
out a Twitter. It is like Friendfeed or Spokeo on your mobile phone, tied
to your address book so that you can message your friends based on what they are
doing.