Getting Crowded In Here

From the shameless promotion desk: my Identity and Privacy Services team at the Burton Group has started a blog. I'll be posting there too from time to time, but what makes me really happy is that you'll get to hear the same voices I hear every week at work.

Check it out.

O Brave New Web

... That hath such creatures in it.

Your friends and associates: Collect 'em! Trade 'em! I'll give you eight bucks for a mint Babe Ruth rookie card, or six for a Larry Ellison business card!

Jigsaw has been slashdotted today via a story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Have I mentioned The Absurdity of "Owning One's Identity"?

Jigsaw's claim that user activity will keep information up to date in their system isn't particularly convincing to me, by the way: I used their "Find out if you are in Jigsaw" feature to discover that information for "blakley@us.ibm.com" IS in their database. I'd like to meet him. I bet we'd have a lot to talk about.

Jim Fowler, Jigsaw's CEO, says he's thought deeply about the moral issues Jigsaw raises, and that everything's OK. To investigate that claim, try the following thought experiment:

Meditate on Jigsaw. Breathe deeply. Let your feelings flow.

Meditate on LinkedIn. Breathe deeply. Let your feelings flow.

Explain your feelings.

Want a hint? LinkedIn is different from Jigsaw - it requires you to accept an introduction before it dishes the dirt on you. That's a tiny step in the right direction, but I'd rather have a Meta-Identity System than either of these Web 2.0 Identity Systems. It would be easy to do this for business contact information.

Here's you visiting a Business Contact Identity Oracle:

You: "Do you know Bob Blakley?"

Oracle: "Yeah, I know him".

You: "Great! Give me his email address."

Oracle: "Pound sand, loser."

You: silence while thinking for a minute.

You: "OK, if I give you MY email address, and a message, will you send it to him?"

Oracle: "Gladly."

Now wasn't that easy?