about.me offers everyone a Web2.0 home page. Besides an interesting trend in narcissism, two things strike me:
- Is this the ultimate page for the stalker? (or identity thief) If ‘yes’, then you presumably find value in the security through obscurity of having a selection of un-linked social networks. That, in itself is an interesting discussion to have.
- The page links to many leading content providers, without the need to give to about.me a single password (at last!). Of course, the click-through for each of the sites entails giving permission to about.me to do almost anything with your account … but at least you can review and revoke that later (oauth is bullet-proof, right?! 🙂 ) . Many of them, in turn, are happy to use Google or Facebook as authenticators (I noticed today that you can make a whole Yahoo! account just from a Google cross-authentication). It would be interesting to map what depends on what, these days.
All in all, this seems like progress of some sort. It’s all starting to work, isn’t it?
Is about.me a good source of authoritative information about the named individual? Hmm. I’m not sure about that: but if ‘identity’ means anything at all, surely it means something about your ongoing and persistent relationships and interactions.