Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Can "Hello My Name is E" cure the identity confusion on the web?

I've been discussing the need for better Identity Management in the web 2.0 era for a long time now, see for instance my blogposts on Identity Confusion and the tribal migration between social sites. Earlier today I ran into "Hello, my name is E." which is was launched today at the PICNIC 08 event in Amsterdam and is currently selecting beta testers.

"Nice to meet you!
I’m your online life, right inside your pocket.
I integrate your social services and make sure you can share your online identities in real life.
I am the physical link to social networking.
My name is E. "

That sounds very welcoming. Small print says you'll need a mobile device capable of internet access, such as a Blackberry or iPhone. Does this exclude simple pc users? And, does it exclude new Google G1 users (since that was also launched today) too?


I can't wait to actually start beta testing this. We really do need to find ways to keep our data centralised, one account to rule them all so to say. One single point of entry with the ability to distribute content through different (media)channels to a variety specified contacts and groups.

I don't wan't to go to twitter, pownce or jaiku any more to type that I've blogged this to a selected audience of my twitter followers, then go through the same motions of spreading the word on LinkedIn or Hyves or Facebook, not even daring to think of autosyncing with Xing, Ning, Plurk, and so forth, yet I do want some control over whom I sent the information to as well. This last bit... that will be the challenge to tackle for the folks over at Hello My Name is E. or any other social media. I do want to discriminate. My family can see more of me (or less), my colleagues can see different thingies and my social network (and my virtual network) can see yet again other things. I want to be able to manipulate these datastreams with preconfigurable settings.

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