microformat

Jumptags.com

The growing awareness of microformats, and what they can contribute to improving the web experience, has led to a new set of startup companies providing web profile and bookmarking services (usually tied in with browser plugins). Basically they are enticing you to use them for your web profiling and social networking all from one site (i.e. building up data in your profile, your social/professional networks, and your surfing history).  This data will be in a format easily processed by the web.  This works in part right now, but the SOA needs to increase, and early experiements will be hard to trust, as  new technology is very fragile in early stages.  As we know, a lot of web 2.0 companies didnt survive, but that is the nature of the web  startups - they can finish as quickly as it started.

Though I wouldnt recommended trusting any particular service per se, there is not harm signing up for a few, and discovering the benefits of this newer approach to user profiling and social networking.  Microformats now exist for all kinds of data, presenting in a machine friendly format.  In the end it is better to have control of your own information, and distribute when/where you want to.  Though I undertsand the need for business to drive these things forward, generally most ideas centre around centralisation of data - somehting I can never ultimately agree with.