Spokeo
Another similar service has entered the social reaggregating space. Spokeo asks you for the email addresses of your friends (by giving them take a peek at your GMail address book, for instance), and finds your friends’ accounts on all the interesting services out there — flickr, blogger, last.fm, etc… You are then given a feed reader that aggregates the activity of all your friends.
An interesting idea, to be certain, and carrying a lot more immediate personal benefit for someone signing up than ReIntegrate.US gives. At first glance, Spokeo and ReIntegrate.US seem to be in the same space, but they’re actually not. ReIntegrate.US provides an aggregated picture of who you are, while Spokeo provides an aggregated picture of who your friends are. ReIntegrate.US makes it easier for your friends to follow you, while Spokeo makes it easier for you to follow your friends. I love the idea, and would like an account, but their system seems to be overloaded with their recent launch.
I’m skeptical of Spokeo’s landing page claim:
Spokeo finds your friends’ blogs and photos that you never knew about, guaranteed.
Really? Nobody can guarantee to find your friends’ blogs and photos. Given my email address, you wouldn’t be able to find my Tumlbr blog, for instance. I suppose they’re guaranteeing that they’ll find something you didn’t know about before. Or are they guaranteeing that that’s what they’re trying to do? I hate marketing speak.
I see room for both ReIntegrate.US and Spokeo on the ‘net. Perhaps there’s a way for ReIntegrate.US to return your personal page given your email address so that Spokeo can more reliably identify your public sources, but I shy away from anything that would push your email address out. Ping me if you think this would be cool — perhaps a redirect from http://friendfinder.reintegrate.us/peterjdolan@gmail.com to http://www.reintegrate.us/Peter ?
Thanks Cail!
