Friend Classifications

A colleague of fine was mentioning recently that it's "hard to keep contacts separate (work/friends/family)" on all the different social networking sites. I couldn't agree more. This is made additionally hard by the fact that each "social network" site imposes their own "classification" of friends. These classifications are not mine and I have to morph my view of my contacts into these imposed rigors.

I would much prefer to be able to manage my contact classifications as "tags". Taxonomies force me into specifying that a contact can be in only one group. I have work colleagues that are also friends. If I could "tag" all my contacts with my own classification scheme and then use that when interacting with social networking sites, life would be much simpler.

I guess this is the "promise" of the "Open Social Web".

Tags: Friends, Classification, Open Social

"Open" Foundation Overload

With the creation of the OpenSocial Foundation, the DataPortability Group (they'll need a Foundation soon), the Information Card Foundation and of course the now established OpenID Foundation... I'm getting "foundationed" out.

I wonder if the community couldn't do something closer to OASIS and have one over arching Foundation with sub-groups working in each of these important areas. The IPR could be consistent for all the groups, but each group would have it's own "board of directors" and control the results of specifications and other efforts.

All the different focuses are important, and new areas will arise as the identity layer grows across the internet. However, convincing "management" to join multiple different organizations is a deterrent to participation.

Tags: OpenID, OpenSocial, DataPortability, Information Cards, Foundation