I used to have a friendster account, my first social network. I had about ten friends and after a few years a closed my account because I never went there and didn’t feel like hassling my friends who were already on facebook, myspace, orkut, or any of the other social networks to join Friendster. I joined other social networks, where most of my friends were, and I created a ‘ring’. I use linkedIn for my professional social profile, and I use facebook for my general social profile. Because I have friends on Hi5 and MySpace I decided to join those two as well and provide links to the my two main social profiles so that I don’t have to repeat information. My cardinal rule: Try the service, if you have less than 30 friends after a year – quit the service.

Now I get invites to other social networks, but why bother (other than geeky curiosity of course)? I will just have to re-invite all my friends from other networks, or search for new ones on the ‘new’ service, and then I will just put a pointer to my facebook and linkedIn accounts. What we need is a mesh service that allows us to join as many social network sites we want, manage our info from one central location, and not have to go to ten different sites! It would also be nice if our friends from one social network can connect with our friends from other social networks without the need to join that competing social.

I hope the DataPortability thing catches on…