Tribe.net Introduces Open Profiles

[Jeff]

By Jeff Hester
June 22, 2005

You've probably got more than a few profiles floating around the internet, including a few you might have even forgotten about. Personally, I've got profiles on BigBlueBall, Yahoo, MSN Spaces, Flickr, Blogger, and on and on. Wouldn't it be nice if you could pick one place for your "master profile" and pull the relevant bits from their respective locations?

That's the premise behind the "open profiles" introduced at tribe.net. Their vision is a profile that allows you to collect data from a wide variety of other sites via RSS. You could include the latest posts from your LiveJournal blog, the latest photos from your cameraphone on Flickr, your Amazon wish list, and even bookmarks from del.icio.us. Best of all, your new, master profile would be automatically updated whenever changes are found on any of the other sites.

"As open standards and information sharing become more common across the Internet, relationships will increasingly rely on individuals getting to know and trust each other through open profiles," said Jan Gullett, CEO of Tribe. "In the future, where you host your profile on the Internet will become as important as where you host your e-mail today."

"On typical community sites today, users create profiles to describe themselves, but they generally can only use photos, links and text that they themselves manually enter or upload into that site. In effect, those profiles are 'closed,'" said Wade Lagrone, Vice President of Marketing for Tribe. "Now, imagine an 'open' profile which seamlessly integrates data you keep elsewhere on the Web, in addition to offering an easy-to-use suite of blogging, photos and customization features. Tribe's op en profiles are the easiest, most convenient and most flexible way to tell the world about yourself."

Tribe.net is a free online community that helps local people connect with each other based on shared interests. When I first looked at it, I immediately thought of craigslist.com, and that appears to be one of their key competitors.

It will be interesting to see if their vision for an open profile succeeds. Check it out at www.tribe.net