Google Profiles

[Malacasta]

This seems like an excellent idea.
http://www.webinknow.com/2009/03/no-...e-profile.html

[Kraxe]

Facebook shot themselves by makign the profile pages so limiting in what you can and cannot show to people really. Maybe I don't know enough about facebook but they could simply have a public AND private profile so that people can see more about who you are. I've found that a total pain in the ass when trying to look for some old friends with common names and an avatar pic that is unidentifiable. If FB had a public profile that everybody could access without allowing them access to everything, it would be a much better service.

As it stands, this just makes one more place that I have to remember that I have details about myself that I might forget about. I cringe when I think about the number of 'profiles' I probably have out there. I started deleteing myself from services that I thought were a good idea at one time or another. The only oldish one I left intact was friendsreunited.

Admittedly, as many services combine or are assimilated (ie Flickr and yahoo, Google and blog) things are getting easier to keep track of your own information. Google... well, everybody has a google account or some link to google so I'm not opposed to it. But I just get the feeling, oh, another profile.

Maybe this is all about Them. Maybe They are behind this, getting people to essentially give themselves up, police themselves, and make their job easier by voluntarily giving up our privacy and freedom by offering us nice shiny fun things in return for us telling them every little thing about us and commenting and relaying everything we do. Profile...Blog...Twitter... Who needs Government surveilance anymore?

[Calan]

Kraxe-

You can, very easily, set your FB profile to allow some people to see your info and not others. It's all in the privacy settings. I, for example, have made a group that includes all of my family members on FB and blocked them from seeing most of my profile. When my mother joined FB, it was all over lol.

[Nephrys]

I think what he means is that when you do a search for someone.. you really get no information. So when I'm trying to find my best friend from high school on facebook and I search for John Doe... I get 80 million hits, and all I really see is a sometimes shoddy picture and MAYBE a network. So I end up with 10 possible Johns that could be my old high school buddy! Kraxe is saying it'd be nice if you could let people see a little more when searching for you, without letting them see everything. I'm pretty sure there isn't a way to do that.

[Kraxe]

Yep, nephrys hit it on the nail.