(2006-08-29) Wilson Aggregating Messages

Fred Wilson on the need for aggregating various message streams (Universal Inbox) - for EMail, Instant Messaging, and now Site Mail. I can forward all my EMail accounts (seven I think) to a single mailbox and I've been managing my email that way for a long time. But I can't do that with TextMessages/Text Messaging, instant messages, myspace sitemail, blog comments (I do get the comments on my blog via email), comments on my various social networks (Social Networking), IRC discussions, and postings to Del.icio.us for me. Feeds can be a tool to manage a lot of this. (RssAggregator) I Commented that this is an opportunity for Google Reader, My Yahoo, etc.

Sept6: Fred notes the surfacing of FaceBook updates from your Social Network as RSS feeds, and the backlash from a subset of users (Transparent Society). He and his commenters note that part of the issue is that these Social Networking sites tends to encourage over-use of the "friends" label, and that suddenly making person nuggets more explicitly visible to a whole Political Network vs your Social Network changes the Game Rule. I Commented that it would be cool if FaceBook could provide distribution curves on numbers of "friends".

• Dave Winer suggests new features be made Opt In. That seems ridiculous to me: Opt-Out makes much more sense.

• FaceBook has responded.

• Danah Boyd has a couple pieces about the whole thing. She still isn't satisfied, though that may be more After Shock than current-state problem... (which is still bad for Word Of Mouth).