As someone who has incorporated social networking into how I build relationships, I understand the limits associated with privatizing my contacts and personal information. I receive invitations to social networks and support networks almost weekly and the task of replicating my information and sharing contacts is beyond tedium.
There is good news on the horizon. Companies like Plaxo, MySpace, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft along with others are building their platforms based on open information interchange (Open IDs).
What does that mean to an online networker? It allows us to take our information and contacts along with us to a new network. Here’s an example. Some of my contacts on one are also my contacts on LinkedIn, Facebook, DIGG, Plaxo, or UNYK. Each time I am invited to a new network I have to enter all of my personal information again on that network. I then have to invite everyone from my networks to join me on that service. In an open environment all I would have to do is import my date through my Open ID. Everyone in my network could also easily add themselves on the new network.
Information and status changes happen automatically across networks. Even a post like this which I have to copy and paste four times to share with all of my networks can be completed as one post on my open network.
For more information on this listen to the Connection show podcast featuring
