Social Network Aggregation, Killer App in 2008?

blogdig writes "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'..." Unfortunately the most important use of these applications won't be seen for some time. I refer of course to using my warlock to murder the ongoing stream of hot girls who want to be my friend on these sites.

Comments

We'll see

[guruevi]

I think social networking sites are going to gain and then lose a lot of momentum, maybe not over the next year but over the next decade we'll soon see that social networking sites are going the way of the MUD.

I don't want to manage a social networking site let alone have an app that collects all the data and sends it to multiple sites at once.

Not a universal killer app

[Critical_]

I wholeheartedly agree that the first startup to get profile aggregation and contact management right will solve many power-user's frustrations with multiple profiles. However, I am not sure if this will be the universal killer app that people believe it to be. At this time, myself and many of my friends have profiles on multiple networks but each one caters to a different audience. My LinkedIn profile is for professional contacts, my Facebook is largely for keeping in touch with select college friends and family, and Friendster and Myspace are for everyone else. I don't necessarily want the same level of personal information available on every site. I would however like a way to group each person's multiple profiles under their name and be able to extract relevant contact information for synchronization into my mobile phone via Outlook.

Maybe this idea can be taken further. Is there an open framework where I can create a personal profile on my own server or free hosting service and link to my friends profiles a la Jabber's open model but for the social scene? Could this service provide a comment space, photo sharing, private messaging (via email), and RSS feeds via a shared application API? It seems like this would be very easily to implement if Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Hi5, and Bebo decided to open their networks to non-local hosted profiles and take the data from your profile and display it using their service's user interface. SPAM and privacy controls would have to be implemented but it would be as simple as: "If you would like to link your profile into the Facebook network please verify your profile via OpenID/OpenID2, email address, or mobile phone number." Granular privacy controls could be implemented by allowed users to group their friends profiles based on how much they want to share. Facebook has already started doing this.

Until this can occur, profile aggregation will be at the whim and mercy of the "terms of service" of the big walled gardens. As it stands, profile link list sites like My Mashable, ClaimID, Spock, and Rapleaf along with a mechanism to push your data to these services is just a hack. Unfortunately, its the only way to go for now.

It's like the old saying...

[niceone]

If you haven't got anything good to say, aggregate someone else's content.

Or we could go the other way

[svunt]

In 2007, I cancelled my MySpace & facebook accounts, and haven't suffered a damn bit; in fact, I feel that I have more spare time and feel less obligated to engage with every fool who decides to leave me a message. I've decided I *like* the extra hurdles to communication that one email address and a single phone number give me. Since mobile phones, internet etc have come along, I've spent a steadily increasing amount of time responding to pointless messages, reading near-gibberish crap (hai 2 u LOL kekeke) and instead I can concentrate on my REAL friends & colleagues, who can reach me at near light speed whenever they choose to. Between privacy concerns and the general waste of time for anyone who isn't 14 and trying to collect friends in much the same indiscriminate fashion as a newly broadbanded teen does mp3s. I've made the decision to aim for quality in communication and connections, not quantity, and it's been a winning move.

As far as killer apps go, I think the aggregation site aggregators will be the go. Imagine, a site that aggregated slashdot, digg, reddit, engadget, oh wait, that's rss, never mind.

Re:Or we could go the other way

[cowscows]

Not to be too much of a jerk, but don't completely blame the site for the user's problems. I have a facebook and a myspace account, which I use to keep in touch with some people that I otherwise wouldn't, but I don't find that they take up an inordinate amount of my time, energy, or attention. I never felt the need to respond to pointless messages. I generally just ignore them until they stop coming. I don't "friend" anyone who asks, I turn down requests for various things (even from my friends and family), and I don't feel the need to explain myself when I do so.

It's entirely possible to use social networking sites to achieve quality communication. Just because teenagers like to kill time by filling their profiles up with cruft doesn't mean that you have to do the same.

Aggregation doesn't seem to be the problem

[Isao]

Back in the day, certain wonks (myself included) were worried about the proliferation of social networking sites, and that records would not be transferable or interoperable between them. We worried that for example if you were dependent on a site and it went out of business, you'd have no way to extract your social network and take it with you.

Fast forward to today, and we see different behavior. People "friend" you all the time, and your social network becomes populated with many people, some of whom you've never met. At some point it becomes useless as an affinity group, and you'd like to cull the list to make it more useful. The trouble is you don't want to dismiss someone by removing them from your "friends" list, even though your relationship is tenuous at best. The cure appears to be that people abandon profiles and systems wholesale, and jump to a new system with a fresh profile. Friendster begat MySapce, then Facebook, etc. Abandoning the system alienates no one in particular, and lets the user start over with a fresh list.

I'd bet that the last thing users will want is to permanently carry all that baggage with them.

Social Networking Sites and addiction

[fialar]

I have a group of friends who were on Myspace, who have recently jumped on the Facebook bandwagon.
I gave Facebook a try, but it really irked me so I deleted it. So, a little over 6 weeks ago, one of my
friends asked me why I deleted my Facebook AND Livejournal account, and I said I was so over the whole
social networking "phenomenon". This friend became quite a bit ornery over that fact, so this leads me to
a theory. I think people like being on several different social networking sites. It's extra places to check
email, events, etc. The lashing out was like that of someone wondering why someone else couldn't get "their fix".
People are actually ADDICTED to these sites. The sites aren't even that great! (Most are extremely poorly written,
like Myspace)

What ever happened to email or mobile phone text?

I agree...

[UseCase]

I agree. The general population has finally caught on this social networking thing so the "coolness" of it should be wearing off at least from a 1337 point of view. These sites are correctly putting there development dollars into extending there networks to the smart/cell phone markets. The real killer app is going to be the site that finally gets the computer/cell phone social networking thing "right", if there is such a thing. Kind of like

• World of Warcraft

taking the MMO industry to the next level. Not really a revolution but evolutionary advance to better usability.

Re:What's the big deal anyways?

[archen]

Depends on your situation. I moved away from all of my family and friends in the midwest a long time ago, and while I keep up with my very good friend and immediate family, the rest I just tend to lose contact with. Likewise I have friends in Canada but I don't get up there often to visit them. Sure I could call them up all the time, but I don't have time for that and honestly I won't remember every interesting thing that happened to me since the last call.

An online journal can be a good way to keep track of people and check up on how they are doing, and possibly stay in touch. Why not email? True email is good for contact, however social networking works like a reverse email, in which the person chooses whether or not they actually care what happens to you.

It's not for everyone, but it can have its uses. Personally I've come to a similar conclusion as you in that you end up with all of these "fringe" people you hardly know and it ends up being a big spam-pool/time waster.