A year ago I wished we had Decentralized Social Networking based on openID. Back in August '07 we saw the rise of NoseRub starting as a PHP library trying to achieve this purpose. In the last months NoseRub's founder Dirk Olbertz enlarged the team and improved the library. They even started a reference platform based on NoseRub: Identoo.com. And it looks promising indeed!
Identoo allows you to create a
profile and add web(2.0) services you use (
del.icio.us etc.). This alone wouldn't be so extraordinary, basically it's a lifestream many services offer. But what I haven't seen doing another project is recognizing most of your contacts from these services and let them add as contacts to your Identoo account.
But let's not forget, Identoo is (at the moment) a reference platform, or let's say your identity provider. Identoo/NoseRub could be for social networking what WordPress is for blogs: a service provider (
wordpress.com) and an open-source software (
wordpress.org) for the same purpose.
And, as with WordPress, this could of course work: Those who're just looking for the functionality and are not interested in the technical details choose Identoo, others who have their own webspace and want to be in control (meaning both the technology and their properties) take NoseRub.
So, for those interested: See you at
http://identoo.com/walterra/