I’ve recently switched gears from Java development to investigation of the various advances in web 2.0 and am ready to conclude that there is entirely too much stuff. Participation in even a small portion of the available networks requires a great deal of time that is much better spent elsewhere. How can I possibly keep tabs on what’s available, what works and what doesn’t, actively participate in the tools/networks that I like, create content to contribute, share the content, maintain a social life offline and remain employed?

The problem is not with the large number of choices, though, because choice is great. Rather, the issue is that each tool is just another silo of participation, information and content. For the most part, any given tool requires me to create a separate account and profile, which allows me to contribute content that is stored in a proprietary format, accessible only via proprietary apis. I think this video accurately sums up the issues: http://mashable.com/2008/01/14/not-sure-what-dataportability-is-see-the-video

Creating content takes time and effort. If I create content using one tool, can I reuse it in another, or am I doomed to reinvent the wheel?

I was thinking, the other day, about writing a Firefox extension to integrate Google Reader with my live bookmarks (where is the Google Reader API, btw?), but thought it would be great if I could, instead, select from a list of available feed service providers. This would certainly require me to write custom code to interact with each different api. What about a tool(s) that provide an aggregated view of recent activity in the selected social networking tools that I participate in? Maybe this idea is old, I haven’t checked around yet…but such a tool would be great, I think, and much easier to develop if each supported a standard api.

Is OpenSocial the answer? I don’t know, but it’s certainly a start in the right direction. Where does RDF fit into the grand scheme of things (including projects like FOAF and SIOC)? Worth watching is the efforts of the DataPortability group currently taking initiative to address these very concerns (referenced in the video above).

Bottom line, we need a way to ease the burden on the end user so they can do more with less effort. In my opinion, there is a bottleneck created by issues such as multiple account maintenance, content recreation and limited integration between services with disparate apis. Such a bottleneck must be limiting users’ ability to do the very socializing the services are trying to support. I think future trends of adoption will favor those services that are easiest to use and through which data can move effortlessly…those services that support the data interoperability and standard apis mentioned above.