Pop will eat itself

...was the name of a seminal "alternative" Brit music outfit in the '80s.

A mere 3/4 years ago Dave Recordin gave seminal presentation on openid that still stands today. At some point he casually remarks that people want different identities for themselves and in fact he had several OpenIDs.

This seemed perfectly naturally to me coming from a security background - having more fake identities than Sybil (or fellow aussie Tara) is just your starting point.

In OZ various identity systems (the australia card) and various government and banking PKI initiatives have failed because a unique explicit identity is just too creepy.  What's worse is a flat social network where there is no granularity.  In recent years Chi.MP and Google Buzz have allowed "Groups" but Facebook has remained steadfastly flat - what crazy logic is that?

Its fashionable to critique FB based on privacy - but thats not the point. The point is that it can't work. Now everyone's friend are blamange of mates, Nannas,  ex school friends, colleagues and people that owe you one beer. With "lists" Facebook is showing some vague hint of granularity but maybe too little too late.
Leakage of the disenfranchised will become a network effect - Ryze, Friendster the proof.

The Law of 150 probably only survives on your ability to "chunk down" into subsets. Without seeing the mooted FB privacy controls, "pop" will eat itself.
Dave Recordin was right that everyone deserves to select what identities they have and as many as they can keep a track of!

All your interesting posts are in "draft" (the personal diary you didn't know you had)

Hypothesis 1: (My ratio of drafts to posts is 4:1.) I'd posit that most un-professional bloggers have similar ratios.
Hypothesis 2: Many drafts are really interesting. Because you've not wrestled your words to publish-ability - its raw and unresolved. The very nature of your drafts means have more questions and loose ends that remain unsolved mysteries.
Hypothesis 3: The rest of your drafts are inane - but no more inane than your tweets.

This is a quick post triggered by Paul Carr's Thnks Fr Th Mmrs: The Rise Of Microblogging, The Death Of Posterity. Based on Leo Laporte's epiphany that he'd traded his publishing "center of gravity" over to the social networks - them being the main beneficiary. Paul's response is to exit the social networks - will he cease to exist? Perhaps his posts will be short but have focus and punch.