Dave Winer and Euan Semple are writing about the eventual unbundling of social platforms.
I like this idea that we could all manage our own bundle of apps both social and professional to track our calendars, “buddy” lists, statuses, media habits and etc. etc. yet somehow all of these would stitch together as well, or nearly as well, or even better than they do on facebook but that we wouldn’t have to rely on a single closed platform designed for 23yr olds* to do so.
RSS and openID are somewhere down in the roots of the tools needed, but I think we need tools that take these to higher level of abstraction before we’ll get anywhere.
For example, I see Jaiku [my Jaiku page] taking the first step(s) in this direction. You can feed Jaiku feeds for near every social presence app you can think of from you blog to your status feed to photos and music etc.
As I’ve said Jaiku manages to collect a lot of underpants. But underpants are only half the problem.
(of course we know)
Step one: collect underpants
Step two: ???
Step three: Profit!
So what’s step 2? I think we’re still missing the room that really ties all the rugs together. Even, Dave, the great prognosticator is a little vague “How exactly it will happen is something the historians can argue about 25 years from now. It hasn’t happened yet, but it will, unless the rules of technology evolution have been repealed (and they haven’t, trust me)”
*23yr olds and native English speakers at that
