You can choose the amount of personal information you want to display in your profile and Microsoft gives you very granular control over what parts of your profile you want to share with others. You can, for example, choose to share your last name and location only with friends, but make information about your relationship status and hometown public. You can also choose to make some items only available to a small sub-set of your friends.

Favorites

Live Profiles also allows you to create an annotated list of favorite books, movies, and music. One of the nice features here is that Microsoft matches your text entry with images from its Zune catalog or Amazon's book store, and links to both stores directly, which gives this feature more depth than just a simple list of favorite things in Facebook or other social networking sites.

A Little Bit of Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed

Overall, it seems that Live Profiles and the new Windows Live Homepage will tie Microsoft's Live Services together into a very comprehensive social network. While it doesn't have widgets that let you poke your friends, it does have a broad set of applications like Photos,Spaces, Contacts, Groups, Calendar, and Events that can all be integrated into your Live Profile. You can also post Twitter-like messages (Microsoft calls them 'notes') to your profile that will then appear in your friends' accounts as well.

While Microsoft isn't directly marketing it as such, Windows Live is, in reality a formidable challenge to other social networks.

As MySpace develops, so develop the next generation of mainstream web users and thus the web at large. Whether you're a MySpace user or not, it's worthwhile to keep an eye on what the company is doing - especially in terms of user experience.

Fully aware that major changes often cause a major backlash, MySpace has made Profile 2.0 fully opt-in and is saving a copy of their Profile 1.0 of any users who switch, for 90 days. That's smart.

These changes are important. Granular privacy controls on MySpace can help raise the expectations of mainstream users for increasing sophistication regarding privacy in particular and control over their data in general. That means we can all hope for increased vendor support for user control over data - the excuse that mainstream users don't care may not hold up much longer.

W3C standards compliance is good news because a standards compliant web is a web where site rendering doesn't stand in the way of economies of scale for developers. If your code for displaying, rendering, searching or otherwise interacting with websites isn't going to work across all sites - that's a major disincentive for large-scale innovation. W3C compliance is nearly complete for the new MySpace profiles and that's great news.

Though MySpace doesn't get the respect that Facebook does, we still believe that from MySpace is the social networking leader in a number of important ways. Granular privacy controls, for example, Facebook? We'd like that.

Profile 2.0 is going to make a lot of MySpace users unhappy, but only if they're truly happy with their current profile. We think anyone that's been waiting for Myspace to do some serious spring cleaning on how users can customize their profiles is going to love Profile 2.0. To access Profile 2.0:

• Make sure you're not logged into MySpace
• Head to MySpace Canada
• Login to your MySpace account as you normally would

You should now see a small yellow box at the top of your MySpace homepage inviting you to try out the Alpha of Profile 2.0.

What MySpace Should've Looked Like in the Beginning

Profile 2.0 allows for users to customize a lot more of their profile than words. Users can now drag and drop modules, add and remove modules, change themes, privacy settings, profile layouts and more. The advance edit mode allows those with more advanced HTML knowledge to fill out their profile with custom CSS and offers more control over module styles. You are also presented with a visual preview of every change made.

Rearranging My Space

All in all, the new Profile 2.0 will be a great tool to use once it goes public. However those that are already using custom templates from the thousands of sites that offer free MySpace themes may be at a loss until web designers catch up. Profile 2.0 will break most of the custom MySpace themes available. If you choose to try out Profile 2.0 MySpace reserves your 1.0 profile just in case you don't like what you see in Profile 2.0. In any case, back up your current profile settings before trying out Profile 2.0.

Today, though, you'll finally have a new option for sharing who you are with the rest of the world: MeeID.com. This simple web app is easy, straightforward, and entirely customized by you.

MeeID is such a simple application that it hardly needs an explanation. You just go to the web site, sign up for an account and create your profile. Your profile consists solely of a photo you upload and 10 lines (which can be links). That's it. That's your MeeID.

You can see an example MeeID below:

In the above example, Bronson used MeeID to link to his profile on various sites, his online resume, and other sites of interest. However, that's just one way to use this service. MeeID suggests several other ideas, including using MeeID to list your top ten goals, using it to list your contact information like an online business card, putting it in your email signature, and more. We personally like their suggestion of forwarding a custom domain name to the site (Finally, a use for .name URLs?)

Making a MeeID

A search box on the site lets you search the MeeIDs of other users. It found mine by username (sarahintampa) and first name (Sarah), but couldn't locate me when I entered first name and last (Sarah Perez). That could be an issue. We can't be expected to know people's usernames in order to locate their MeeIDs and a one name search query could return an overwhelming number of results once the site becomes more heavily used. Just image having to search for a "John," "Bill," or any other common name in order to locate your friend's MeeID!

Favorites

You can also save your favorite MeeIDs which are then available as a drop-down from the top of the page. Others visiting your profile can view these, too. Although it's understandable that they're trying to keep the app simple, the fact that they limit you to only ten favorites may mean we'll have to make some hard choices in the future as to who gets to appear in that list.

Ads

MeeID is sponsored by advertisers that choose to pay to have their links display beneath every person's MeeID on the site. At launch time, three sponsors were showing: AmberMac, Death Cab For Cutie, and Wired Magazine. The ad is beneath your info and really not that intrusive, so if it helps pay the bills, we're OK with that.

Simple = Good

Overall, MeeID is a nifty little app and one that can be used by anyone - not just social media addicts like ourselves. It doesn't do much, but it doesn't really have to. Sometimes a simple app is just what you need. And it's so easy that anyone can understand how to use it in minutes to quickly claim their place on the web.

Atomkeep is a service that aims to help users keep their profiles in sync across multiple networks. Registration is as simple as typing in your email address and a password. A confirmation email will be sent to your email address for verification. Unlike most sites, Atomkeep does not immediately prompt you to enter in the typical user information such as your name, birthday, etc. Instead, you're immediately taken to the 'Manage Accounts' page to choose from a list of social networks to import or merge existing data from. You can use your profiles from other networks to fill in your Atomkeep profile or manually add in this information yourself.

Supported networks for Atomkeep include:

• Twitter
• Plurk
• Disqus
• Facebook
• Technorati
• Blogger
• WordPress
• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• Last.FM
• Ning
• Pownce
• Yelp
• Youtube

Tons more are also supported with support for numerous more social networks on the way.

Synchronizing Your Profiles

You can synchronize all of your profiles or just one by providing your password for each account on the synchronization page. Atomkeep also shows you the synchronization process for each account that you choose to sync. Here's a demo video of how the synchronization process works.

Atomkeep.com: Step Four. Sync. from Olexandr Prokhorenko on Vimeo.

Too Many Social Networks

Are we spreading ourselves so thin across the web that we have to create more utilities in order to keep up? When services such as Atomkeep pop-up, one wonders if maybe we're joining too many social networks. On the other hand, there's no denying that Atomkeep is a handy tool if you're forever changing your information and can't stand the process of updating each of your accounts one by one.

Web developer and active FriendFeed user Hao Chen has created a FriendFeed profile greasemonkey script that will import a user's Twitter profile and display it on FriendFeed.This script will only work if the user has his or her Twitter stream being imported into FriendFeed.

Extended Twitter Profile

While the simple profile that Twitter offers may suffice for some, sometimes you just want more. In comes the Extended Twitter Profile background. Released by Fabrice Epelboin, this is a Photoshop .PSD file that you can customize by adding more images, web addresses, and general information. Once you're done with editing the .PSD, simply save your file as a .jpeg or .png image file and upload it as your Twitter background.

Making Twitter and FriendFeed Better Places

These extensions are a great addition to both communities and good for promoting your site and more. Now you can finally figure out who the guy who keeps requesting you on FriendFeed really is. On the same note, you can finally promote other communities and sites on Twitter without spamming your followers. If you're using the Extended Twitter Profile background, leave a link to your Twitter profile in the comments section and show us what you've done.

We did notice some inconsistencies with the new layout in the developer sandbox version. For example, at least one app had a box appearing on the left side bar on all profile pages, with no clear indication of how to add and remove applications from that area -- or how many would be allowed that special treatment. We also thought it strange that to post to the wall, users are asked to use a box on the Feeds tab, while there is no way to post from the actual Wall page. That said, this is a beta sandbox page, and Facebook informed developers that, "some features are not necessarily enabled and others are still in flux."

When we introduced the new tabbed profiles in February, we theorized that the limited space for applications was an attempt to encourage developers to create more useful apps. Facebook said then that applications that "don't provide value and meaning for users" would face "challenges" under the new profile layout.

Now that the new profiles are (almost) live, what do you think? Do tabs make sense? On one hand you have extra clicks to get to certain profile information, and profiles are even less able to be customized by the user now. But on the other, there is a lot less garbage in the way of applications that users are forced to wade through to find the information they want -- profiles are now undeniably cleaner. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

What does more restricted space for applications means? Facebook hopes that it translates to better apps. In a blog post last Friday alerting developers of the upcoming changes, Facebook encouraged "application developers to focus on building applications that facilitate communication, generate meaningful activity, and increase users' trust," noting that any applications that "don't provide value and meaning for users" would face "challenges" under the new profile layout.

We noted last month that Facebook applications may have peaked in popularity and that a lot of people are beginning to feel "app fatigue." We suggested then that the solution for developers to overcome app fatigue, and to overcome stricter rules being imposed by Facebook about how applications can be spread via invites was simple: make better applications.

Facebook's looming profile design changes seem to be aimed squarely at the large number of apps that have been developed for its platform that don't add much utility. Once upon a time, people flocked to Facebook in large part because it had a cleaner design than rival social networks. But the launch of the Platform last May started Facebook down the road toward cluttered profiles like this one. Clearly, the social network is attempting to push people toward trimming down their use of applications that provide little utility, and rather focusing on applications that offer "meaningful activity," as they phrase it.

This is a long term strategy for Facebook. In the near term, getting people to stop using silly apps (or at least place less emphasis on them and use them less) means fewer page views and less ad inventory. But in the long term, getting developers to create more apps that have real utility for people, will get more people to rely on Facebook for more of their daily activity -- which furthers the goal of building the Facebook platform into a web operating system.

It is, however, important to take these changes with a grain of salt. What Facebook is showing off now is early in the design process and is not set to drop until Spring, so changes are certainly possible. The social network is inviting users to participate in the design process by giving feedback on iterations of the new profile design.

What do you think of Facebook's planned tabbed profiles? Will it result in better apps? Will diminish the clutter that has begun to take hold of many Facebook profiles? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.