PeopleAggregator komt eraan....

Marc Canter is zeker een van de meest kleurrijke figuren in het technologielandschap. Ik volg hem al jaren aangezien het een visionair is, maar zeker ook een ondernemer. Zijn bedrijf MacroMind werd uiteindelijk MacroMedia (en nu Adobe). Jaren geleden werd reeds de PeopleAggregator aangekondigd, en binnen enkele weken zal de eerste versie beschikbaar komen zo vertelde hij bij het etentje wat we laatst in Amsterdam hadden. In deze podcast gaat hij wat dieper in op wat de PeopleAggregator is en geeft tegelijkertijd zijn visie op de wereld van social networking diensten.

"Marc gave his views on how social networks are evolving and the need for open standards. Social networks include your content (text, audio, video) and list of friends. People are invested in relationships with other people and want to move their data from one place to the next, but there is no import/export option, he said. "I'm trying to encouarge the big data silos to open up." He is betting that among the big players, Apple, Google and Microsoft will stay closed, but he is holding out hope for Yahoo and AOL to be more open. Of course, it not clear yet how Yahoo or AOL (a client of Broadband Mechanics) might make data accessible and portable for users. The same questions can be posed to MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, Bebo and other upstart social networks. Marc is an evangelist for a level playing field and may the best service win. Loyalty is accorded based on the value services provide–the lock in approach is Web 1.0, he said. During the podcast Marc handicaps the various players in what he called an "interesting chess game unfolding"; highlights the importance of identity and authentication services and structured content standards; and discusses his company's PeopleAggregator, an open source project based on open standards that will allow people to create their own social networks and integrate them with any other software via internal APIs and external Web services."