With the full membership launch of the @facebook.com email system, Facebook users have had thrusted upon them (in a good way) another feature that makes Facebook a more sticky site. Combining personal email with a a person’s personal network, Facebook has created another reason to be at the center of the public’s web activity. But what if it if this were to become the case completely? Everyone having a single profile that is the center of their identity and all activity online.
I’ve thought about this previously and believe that Facebook has one more step towards coming this. With the use of Facebook Connect and the movement towards Facebook commerce the personal Facebook profile is becoming a central internet experience. What could be next for the website
Centralizing your web experience:
Instead remembering the logins and credentials for every forum, portal or service you use online these are instead connected directly to your persona. Instead attempting to remember or search through your personal bookmarks you can click directly into the sites you use. Your bank accounts, bills owing and other personal information can be accessed from a single location (think your own personal life dashboard). This persona of you online would be an amalgamation of your personal information and everything you do online.
But aren’t we supposed to be anonymous online?
There are definitely some downsides to having all of your online presence in one location. One big push towards this sort of thing happening is the fear that we will become essentially naked online putting ourselves completely out there. Your internet activity can be traced to one source potentially revealing that you like to play Dungeons and Dragons or perhaps have interests that are bit more out of the mainstream . There is also the regulatory fears surrounding such a online system. Can you trust Facebook or really any other company with essentially all of your online information? Will they use or abuse this information? What if there’s a screw up? I won’t even touch the government and regulatory concerns about that as that would be opening a whole other can of worms.
This may never happen! Why waste your time theorizing?
The thought of data and lots of it! Smart companies are bringing together data online for useful and profitable applications. Also I don’t think we realize how much of ourselves is actually online in so many different corridors of the web. How much of ourselves we have access to, give out and have tracked about ourselves. We create our own ‘internet footprint’or some would say even a trail of ourselves online and there are firms who work to track and amalgamate it.
So there is my random thought for the time being. If anyone wants to add to the pool feel free to do so!
Want to reach me outside of this ‘data stream’ I can be contacted at kevin@kevrichard.com or on twitter with @kevrichard.
Tags: Facebook, online personal, Social Networks