Bricks and Boxes

Some day last week I woke up feeling instantly distressed, wondering, for no apparent reason, what exactly had happened to Google Friend Connect.  Two days later that, I found an email in my inbox saying that I had been white-listed as a tester for the service, my mind was then blown in the advent of synchronicity, and I’m still sort of scratching my head.  More importantly however, I got to thinking about what the big picture of this sort of technology would be, seeing as Facebook recently launched Facebook Connect, and MySpace is working on MySpaceID, which I can only hope will let tweens implement flashing gif backgrounds on any website they choose.

On the heels of Anthony’s recent post regarding privacy concerns in social media, the subsequent step of content aggregation beyond services like ping.fm, FriendFeed, and Power.com is to take something you already have and use and to embed it in everything else you do on-line.  Instead of adding layers to your already triple-decked social media sandwich, why not brown-bag it and take your identity with you wherever you go?

What Google, Facebook, and Myspace aim to do with their new services is to nurture the idea of having your circle of friends with you during every step of your on-line life.  Instead of logging on to each website separately, you would use one unified ID for everything (much like OpenID) and have all of your activity and sharing on these websites linked back to a main profile (not so much like OpenID).  The best way I can think to describe this is to imagine that every website you went to had a FriendFeed widget built in, providing universal support for the entire internet.  No more aggregation, no more linking your Flickr to your Tumblr via RSS so you can send things from your phone to have them posted on your Twitter.  You send it to one profile, and all of your friends see it.  Right?  Right.  Its still cloudy for me, too.

The utility of such a thing could be great and fantastic, but at the same time not only does it revoke a large percentage of your online privacy, but as a result of that, you are suddenly held directly accountable for everything you do on-line.  While Google and Facebook are suddenly presented with daily records of your day-to-day life, and profit immensely from the potential ad-value of such information, you also can no longer enjoy the face-less anonymity that sitting behind a computer once gave us.  Consider how many different websites you’ve signed up to, and that maybe you didn’t use the same username at each one.  On one part of the internet, you could be that guy that everyone hates, starting flamewars left and right, meanwhile over at CuteOverload you’re having the time of your life discussing your deep heartfelt love for all things small and furry.

With a connection between these profiles (ie AngryDude203 and ILikePuppies15 are linked to google.com/SteveJ) suddenly your online life begins to feel a whole lot more like real life.  In the same way that everyone in your home town sees your face and remembers that dumb skit you did in the 8th grade, escape from who you were in the past becomes that much harder.

Are we ready for these corporations to know everything we do?  More importantly, are we ready for the people we know personally to know everything we do?  Is this the future in social networking, and will the success of one company or another be the death-knell for independant websites? Share your comments, and in the meantime I’ll be under a few feet of concrete constructing my tin-helmet.