Comments on: The Problem With Profile Aggregators

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:47:27 +0000

The site http://www.profilefly.com is attempt to bring the social element back to social networking bookmark/aggregator sites. By combining a minimal profile, and community elements, it helps to prevent the over-technical look some tagging sites have that throw off your typical Myspace/Facebook user.

By: Montoya

Montoya — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 02:34:56 +0000

I can see profile aggregators being useful for people who don’t have a URL to represent themselves; kind of like a biography of one’s self on the web. MySpace fills this capacity for a lot of people, and Facebook for others, but those are more of communities. Then again, the current run of “profile aggregators” don’t really give people enough control, and as you said, without an internal community for people to participate in, there isn’t much there to attract people. They could just as well flop entirely.

By: Matthew Stotts

Matthew Stotts — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:36:23 +0000

I agree that aggregators are a solution in need of a problem, but taken from the perspective of the friend, the “other or the visitor to the user’s profile page – there is a clearly defined need. The need to know or at least desire to know where else on the web this person resides, how they invest their time, what they’re into. For example, this is my first time on wisdump, got here from 9rules, knew about ScrivsTyme, didn’t know about oreo or myspace.com/9rules. I know a lot more about Scrivs now, but it took a lot of work. Much respect, M

By: Justin Kistner

Justin Kistner — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:17:17 +0000

First, I want to say that while I had heard about and signed up for ClaimID a few months back, I didn't know there were enough aggregators to warrant a round up. A long time ago I bought my name as a domain name and I've been using it for what I've been calling my presence gateway, which is an unordered list of the various places where I hold accounts. I see many other people using their MySpace accounts to list other profile names they care about. Therefore I too do not see a problem dictating the need for a service to create a list of the places I hold accounts.

The barrier to enter the â€œonline profile aggregatorâ€ market is so incredibly low that you see a dozen services all doing the same exact thing pop up within only a few months of the first, thus showing how little unique value these services offer.

I strongly agree, Mike. :) To me, I think profile aggregators point to the need for a globally recognized identity system that manages permissions. It is truly annoying to have to remember so many passwords and to have to login to each community separately. People are trying to solve that problem, but I don't want some corporate sponsored system like Microsoft Live ID and OpenID isn't mature enough yet.

By: Mike Rundle

Mike Rundle — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 05:22:45 +0000

I see the problem with profile aggregators is that they solve a problem that no one actually has. People who keep user profiles at multiple “social networking” sites do so because they like those sites and use them, and they have more value to them than simply holding some of their personal information. I use Flickr not to just hold my photos but to explore the millions of community photos, leave comments, and tag my friends’ uploads. I use Digg because I like having an impact on the stories that show up there, Facebook because it allows me to connect with others, and around it goes.

These profile aggregators are leech applications, they don’t provide any real reason for people to use them besides mashing together various online profiles, a feat which takes only a handful of code that a braindead developer could write in a day or two. The barrier to enter the “online profile aggregator” market is so incredibly low that you see a dozen services all doing the same exact thing pop up within only a few months of the first, thus showing how little unique value these services offer.

When your company does absolutely everything that another company does but adds “support for one more service” then you know you’re in the wrong market or approaching the solution from the wrong angle. Just like with all the Ajax-enabled homepages, the profile aggregators are locked in this unwinnable game of one-upsmanship that has them focusing on the wrong things.

Any investors who put money into these sorts of things only do so because they lament the fact they missed investing into one of the startups that these profile aggregators… aggregate. When you buy into a market you’re looking for Saks Fifth Avenue or Macy’s, not K-Mart or Kohl’s, and that’s what these profile aggregators are.