It’s really about time an un-tainted web entity offered a profile repository system. This service would be allow anyone to make a profile about themselves (tied to an email) where they can share as much or as little info as they wanted. For example I could share my name, hometown, and profession, or I could link to my homepage, add photos, link to my online photos, give my interests, etc. Or I could have all of that and only post an alias name. I could share just wanted I was comfortable with being publically known.

This service would make a webpage for each profile, but it’s real purpose would be having an open API such that any web site (specifically a web site where you shared profile info) could offer a link via to you public profile. So if you’re using Dogster, for example, where we don’t share human info, yet you approved us linking to your open profile, we would. Since most websites that display profile information do not seek the entire set of data that could be your public self, they could all offer you a benefit by linking to your open profile. Instead of having to keep 10 online profiles up-to-date, you could have them all link to your one public site. Passwords and permissions would be inplace so only you could control who accessed your public profile

I’ve heard of a couple sites offering such a service as a corrolary to their product, but for them to be truly embraced as a trustworthy and usage-agnostic they’ll have to avoid anything close to propietary of service-specific functionality or it’ll hardly be universally adopted. I suspect for someone to get it right and become embraced and trusted by hundreds of topic-specific services, it will need to administered by an independent open-source-minded entity whose biggest financial concern is breaking even. Really I don’t care who gets it right and how, but it’s needed and I’ll be making it I reckon if it doesn’t happen first.

In case it’s me, I just bought publicprofile.org and .net ;>