Between Flickr streams, Last.fm charts, LiveJournal blogs and del.icio.us bookmarks (not even mentioning e-mail, IM and Skype), the whole new, and much-hyped “social software” phenomenon can begin to feel like a multiple personality disorder.
So what’s GoingOn? Well, it is the brainchild of Macromedia founder Marc Canter and Tony Perkins, founder of business media site AlwaysOn and has been described as the world’s first true “digital lifestyle aggregator”. The idea is a meta-network in which all of your subnetworks are inter-connected, so you can share things like profile data and microcontent across the larger network, and network operators can split revenues from ads and web services. Ideally, they’re aiming for complete interoperability with existing services like Friendster, Tribe, et al – which would be some trick, and incredibly useful.
GoingOn will also have its own social-networking component built in, but Canter is adamant that they’re not trying to switch other products to his platform. Instead, his goal is interoperability; in his words, “We will become an identity hub.” It’s based on Drupal and will offer a completely customizable environment and templating systems for self-publishers. The entire concept has made me very curious as I have tried out several different “lifestyle aggregators” such as SuprGlu and Tribe but to no avail,. Hopefully we’ll get some sneak previews or some demo-work before the expected rollout date (which I’m not actually sure of) – for now we’ve got some lovely eye candy: a sample profile page.
GoingOn is just one part of a growing movement called “Identity 2.0” that is dedicated to challenging the way our identities are managed online. Identity 2.0 is the idea that people should have precise control over what others know about their personal data. As online shoppers know, we are expected to part with significant amounts of information to process even simple transactions online – from names and addresses to credit card numbers and mothers’ maiden names. And once the data has been sent off into the ether, it’s anybody’s guess what becomes of it. According to Dick Hardt, CEO of Vancouver-based Sxip Identity (pronounced “skip”), this reflects a fundamental discrepancy between the way identity is handled in the online and offline worlds. If you want to know more about the concept of Identity 2.0, then I suggest Dick Hardt’s presentation that he made at OSCON 2005 introducing Identity 2.0, it can be viewed here.
Filed under: Internet, Technology, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment
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