• "Managing  scattered online Social Life on multiple Social Networking sites, I sense,  will become a Killer App Category 2008. There are several startups now in the  "Social Network Aggregation" space and this App Category should diversify and  catch momentum in 2008. Some startups are focusing on identity consolidation,  others on messaging consolidation and on tracking friends. Some like Profilefly  offer consolidation of multiple things like Profiles, Contacts and  Bookmarks....The need for users to be a member of not just one but multiple  social networks can be understood through Barry Wellman's concept of 'networked  individualism'..."

  • so true, so true!

• Too Many Choices, Too Much Content

   

  Written by Sarah Perez / May 14,  2008 4:00 AM / 42  Comments

• 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.

  • SN fatigue is a big issue here....

• 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 only way to stay sane in this dynamic and fast-paced "soical media" environment is leverage tools to make one's life easier. Aggregators are available for virtually every type of service, RSS Aggregators, Social Network Aggregators, etc.

• 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.

  • This is the future of the social web. Early Adopter or not, mobile social networks are coming to a theater near you so crank up your mobile's data service to get in on the action!

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• June 3, 2008 (PC World) Whether you're a social  butterfly constantly seeking new sites to cross-pollinate, or a caterpillar  creeping after your friends from one network to the next, you have likely  experienced social-site fatigue by now.

• 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:

• Similar  to FriendFeed, it presents the latest actions on the Web from your friends  as a continually updating stream.

• 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.

  • Hey, Spokeo is pretty cool!
• 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.

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• Spokeo combines the top 20 social networking destinations with any RSS feeds you  like into one glimpse through a multimedia RSS reader. But you can’t actually  navigate within the networks. It just gives you a run-down. Sort of like My  Yahoo! for Web 2.0 sites.

• Remember to evaluate Profilatic against other social aggregators - Michael Marlatt on 2008-03-21

• Companies like FriendFeed — and there seem to be a growing number of them these days — are trying to solve a problem that the Internet itself created. The proliferating number of blogs, user-generated content services and online news sources has created a dense information jungle that no human could machete his or her way through in a lifetime, let alone in an afternoon of surreptitious procrastination at work.

  • the online information jungle
• Last month, bowing to the appeal of feed services, Facebook began to let users share their activities on other sites, like the photo services Flickr and Picasa, and the review site Yelp. The company says it plans to continue to link more Web sites to the social network.

•  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.

  • we all need a 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. 
• 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.

  • 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.

2 more annotations...

• A centralized "me" - Michael Marlatt on 2008-04-18

• 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.
• Yahoo didn’t invent anything here, but simply integrating all of these services  is powerful stuff. If you think about it, oneConnect is a mobile portal for the  social Web.

• Yahoo! has announced Y! One Connect -- an application in Yahoo! Go for  Mobiles -- that will allow Social  Network  Aggregation. One Connect will launch in Q2 (pdf announcement).  Quite as I had predicted Social Network Aggregation will be super hot in 2008.