I think one of the main problems is that integration requires common protocol and standards adoption which is not a priority for many service providers, nor is it very easy to build standards for cutting edge technology because that which is cool is innovative and generally requires some departure from protocol.

From my experience as a programmer most of my job seems to be an intergration one, and I hate to say it but I dont see this central aggregator becoming a reality. The aggregator would need to behave like glue, not only in bringing all the services together, but as you say allowing read and write functionality via its protocols, on top of this it would need a way of piping / wiring together the services (e.g. if you add a friend in one place you would want to add it the other), you would also need a configuration console of some kind to be able to set security levels so that thigns like you professional network, could if you chose be shielded from thos Friday night photos or whatever… It sounds like a great idea for an open source project and I can see some people trying the widget approach to do this, but I still dont think it is tighlty integrated enough. Some of the open social networking standardisation will help but again, to stay up with the edge of innovation there will still need to be some very busy integrators. A 'glue' platform would need to be very flexible and configurable and need to be able to be cross platofrm etc. Does anyone know any people building apps like this glue?

I think one of the main problems is that integration requires common protocol and standards adoption which is not a priority for many service providers, nor is it very easy to build standards for cutting edge technology because that which is cool is innovative and generally requires some departure from protocol.

From my experience as a programmer most of my job seems to be an intergration one, and I hate to say it but I dont see this central aggregator becoming a reality. The aggregator would need to behave like glue, not only in bringing all the services together, but as you say allowing read and write functionality via its protocols, on top of this it would need a way of piping / wiring together the services (e.g. if you add a friend in one place you would want to add it the other), you would also need a configuration console of some kind to be able to set security levels so that thigns like you professional network, could if you chose be shielded from thos Friday night photos or whatever… It sounds like a great idea for an open source project and I can see some people trying the widget approach to do this, but I still dont think it is tighlty integrated enough. Some of the open social networking standardisation will help but again, to stay up with the edge of innovation there will still need to be some very busy integrators. A 'glue' platform would need to be very flexible and configurable and need to be able to be cross platofrm etc. Does anyone know any people building apps like this glue?