An in-depth look at Connect.me
Connect.me was ‘released’ a few days ago, and it seems that it’s really started to snowball now, mainly via Twitter.
At the moment, all you can do is reserve your preferred username. Solid information is very scarce so far, which has led to a lot of people out there asking the question, ‘what is connect.me?’. Maybe ‘An in-depth look’ was an exaggeration. Probably should read, ‘a very brief and almost unfounded look at Connect.me’.
I’ve spent the last couple of hours researching and thinking about it, so I thought I’d put fingers to keyboard and explain what Connect.me is and the scope for its use.
What is Connect.Me? – The Facts
Here is how they describe themselves:
We’re not YASN — we’re a better way for you to manage your connections and a better way for online communities to discover and connect to each other.
So what does this really mean?
It first comes across as a new form of social network, but it isn’t. Actually it’s a central, unified application that you can connect some or all of your social networking/media accounts to, then use that to connect with other people.
I came to this conclusion because of the quote above, and the fact that they allow you to currently reserve your preferred username by identifying yourself with your Twitter or Facebook account.
Scope/Musings
When you think about it, it’s genius, and the scope for it’s use is rather large.
Imagine when you make a contact with a new chap or chapette on the bus on the way home tonight, what do you do? You say hello, usually partake in a spot of banter, and swap contact details. Your contact details can consist of many pieces of data, including email addresses, telephone numbers, postal addresses, URLs of personal sites and of course, social networking/social media accounts. This can take a while. Wouldn’t it be great if you could instead, say hello, partake in a spot of banter, open up the connect.me website or smart phone app, add your new contact and have access to all of their data that way?
Obviously security and privacy will need to be assessed in minute detail, but if you ask me the initial concept is a brilliant one.
Put me down for a beta invite.
Update – 10/03/2011
Just a brief update, another article has been written from another perspective, focussing on the danger of connecting your current social networking accounts to a previously unheard of service.
I was commenting only on the concept and scope of this new service, and not the security/privacy concerns a lot of people have been having.
Update – 11/03/2011
March 9, 2011 at 3:05 pm | Musings, Social Networks/Media | No comment