Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Social Networking my way

It seems that I'm not the only one frustrated with the effort and work it takes to maintain relationships between my family and friends at social networking sites. Today on Slashdot there is an article on "Social Network Fatigue Coming?" which references Steve O'Hear's blog. A few weeks ago in a similar blog entry Paul Madsen described how the Liberty Alliance People Service can help solve this sort of fatigue using published standard protocols.

I have to admit that there have been a number of sites I've been tempted to try out and yet when I consider that I will have to create an account, invite my family and friends, and have them create accounts before the site becomes useful... I just kill the page and decide I don't really need that service.

If the social networking services would adopt standards so that I could use a single account and manage my social relationships in one place I would be much more likely to use their services (and pay for them if they provided the right value).

Tags: Liberty Alliance, People Service, social networks