Five Different Approaches to Profile Aggregation

Web 2.0, social bookmarking, social networks, user generated content. Just four familiar terms to people who use the internet regularly these days. The social aspect of the internet has become crucial. Connecting with like minded people all over the world has never been easier before; it is possible with just one mouse click. You want to share your bookmarks, talk about books, find classmates, build business relationships, share your photos, just a handful of possibilities. But you always have to build a meaningful profile first if you want to really benefit from those networks.

However you will have to build one profile for each network. Depending on your interests you will have several profiles on disparate networks and keeping track of them won’t be easy in some cases. Aggregating those profiles might be an idea then. There are several profile aggregators you can use, though I will just mention five aggregators I use myself.

30 Boxes

30 Boxes is primarily an excellent online calendar (see review). But since its launch one year ago it offers some cool additional features. One of them is a simple but efficient profile aggregation service. There are already some pre-defined services where you just have to add your username but you can also add any RSS feed.

Have a look at my profile to see what it looks like to other users.

claimID

claimID is different to 30 Boxes. Users are able to add links to any website which is by them or about them: forum posts, articles, every link they find by searching the web. Furthermore it is possible to categorise links. Maybe this doesn’t sound very exciting to you but categories make it possible to even add links which are not about you. That’s great because you can easily distinguish yourself from your namesakes.

Besides aggregating profiles claimID is also an OpenID provider. See my earlier review on claimID for further details.

Lijit

Lijit is basically a search engine which offers users to search your network. Networks are built by aggregating profiles from your other social networks as well as links from your blogroll; well, actually you can add any website and RSS feed you think that might suit your network.

Wink

Just recently I have written about Wink and its new focus on people search and profile aggregation. For Wink it makes sense combining people search and profile aggregation because both belong to each other.

Ziki

Ziki is a French US company founded in 2006 and it is the only one I have not written about so far. So what has it to offer? Of course, it aggregates all of your various profiles but it also features some very interesting ways to build a complete online identity.

Some personal information is probably vital in order to represent your identity on the web: contact information, interests, tags, photo,… There is also a basic blogging feature so you can easily post short (or even longer) articles directly to Ziki. Other features include groups, related Zikis (=users who share similar interests) and much more. Ziki is actually a small social network itself.

Also it sponsors ads on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for the first 10,000 users. An ad for my name is on Google at the moment. Just have a look at the ad here. Very cool. Right now there are more than 7,800 users registered with Ziki.

I think Ziki is a great service and you should consider registering if you want to build an online identity.

The profile page of Ziki looks like this:

Summary

If you care a lot about anonymity on the web you should not use any profile aggregator, of course. But then you probably haven’t registered with any social networking site at all. The same applies if you have multiple identities on various social networks and want to keep them separate. But if you think building an online identity, basically your own brand, is suitable for you, you should consider using one of the mentioned services.

I think those services demonstrate that there are various approaches to profile aggregation. 30 Boxes is a calendar, claimID an OpenID provider, Lijit a search engine leveraging networks, Wink is also a people search engine, and Ziki a profile aggregator with social networking features. Just see which one fits your needs. It goes without saying that you can use more than one.

There are other services which offer similar features but I can’t say much about them because I have not signed up (yet). Some examples are: Mugshot, ProfileLinker, FindMeOn, and Spokeo.

Related posts:

• Wink: New Look, New Focus
• Ziki Supports OpenID
• myOn-ID: German Reputation Manager
• Building an Online Identity
• Reclaim Your Identity