Library clips

At the moment meta-personal network services are sorely needed as our content is scattered all over the place (bookmarks, blogs, photo’s, video’s, audio, networks, etc…), and this need is certainly being met due to the number of meta-network services popping up all over the place.

Here’s a list:
Jaiku, Ziki, Lijit, ProfileLinker, SocialNetwork.In, Ozmozr, Pidy, Profilactic, Mugshot

Many services will have a slightly different angle, but most enable you to manage and search all your content from the one place, and allow you to stream all your content in one mixed stream…Mugshot seems really slick.

These services also allow you to add friends as most of these services are in a network environment, sometimes you can even search your content as well as your friends content.

Explode is another cross network service but it doesn’t allow you to stream your content, what it does instead is let you join up asking you where your home is, enter only one URL eg. your blog, your myspace page, your social bookmarks page, your digg page, your stumbleupon page, your MyBlogLog page, your ziki page, your mugshot page, etc…

When you browse the system you can add friends, when you click on their image it takes you to what they assigned their home page as eg. blog, myspace, etc…

What is so special about this, I don’t get it?

When I add friends in any network service, eg. Lijit, MyBlogLog, and I click on their image, it will go to their profile, from here I can discover links to their blog page, bookmarks page, myspace page, etc…
Mugshot goes a step further, from a person’s profile page you don’t have to click on their blog link, or bookmarks link, or photo’s link, as the content from these external services are mixed into the one stream right within Mugshot (instead of a gateway it is a portal - displaying the content without having to leave the site).

Add friends outside the system

What I thought Explode would do is let you add friends that are not registered in Explode.

eg. from within Mugshot you can add content from your scattered services, eg. blog, bookmarks, photos, etc…and have it in one stream.
Wouldn’t it be good if Mugshot also allowed you to add friends from all these services, ie. these friends aren’t registered in Mugshot, but you can still add them externally.
Ziki and Lijit allow you to add your OPML Reading List, which is a similar idea, being able to add friends from outside the system…this was my issue in the post People Vertical Search and Personal Network Clouds or is it all just attention.

The weird thing about Explode is there is in fact a public user space after all, from the sidebar on the home page is a comment stream called “What they say”…when you click on the name of the person who is being commented on, it goes to their comment wall.

Within this user space is a link to a profile, but this links to the users defined native homepage eg. blog, myspace page, stumble upon page…it lacks an intermediate Explode profile page, there is also another link to friends, it has further links to:
- People who listed this user as a friend
- Friendship requests
- Invite a friend
- View comment wall

Like ziki you can tag youself, kind of like an expert locator, search a user by tag…but again if you click on a person it doesn’t go to a profile where you can see their friends or their content stream…instead it goes to their blog page, myspace page, etc…
This makes it similar to Technorati Blog Directory, but is more a people directory…click a tag, then click a person, and you are taken to whatever they define their home as eg. their blog, myspace page….see the tag “wine“.

You can get a widget for your blog so people can view your Explode friends, when visitors click on a person, it will launch to their blog, myspace page, etc…whatever they define as their home.

When you click on a person from a MyBlogLog widget it takes you to their profile on MyBlogLog which you can then, from their profile, choose to click the link to their MySpace page, blog homepage, bookmark page, email them, IM them, etc…

What if Mugshot had a friends widget, you could click on a person and it would take you to their Mugshot user space, from here you don’t even have to click to their MySpace page, blog homepage, bookmark page, etc…as you can see it within a content steam right in Mugshot.

I think I’ve made my point, what I’m looking for is a meta-personal content service like Mugshot to let you add other Mugshot users as it currently does, but to additionally allow you to add friends from other social networks. It would extract their photo and basic profile, obviously they don’t have a Mugshot mixed content stream as they are not registered with Mugshot.

Similar to this is adding your OPML Reading List, making these people your friends (only I don’t know where you would get the photo from for their profile…maybe you could add your Technorati Favourites OPML Reading List, this would extract their photo).

In the end it is similar to MyBLogLog, but nowhere as effective.

Related:
AutoRoll : blog recommendation from your visitors
MyBlogLog and community possibilities
Slifeshare : real-time attention social network

[via TechCrunch]