Theres a whole new gaggle of start-ups that are designed to leverage the power (and stickyness) of personal networks; Plaxo, Midentity, LinkedIn, Friendster etc. They work by connecting you to your friends, their friends and their friends friends friends (or contacts). They all attempt to harness the theory behind the six degress of seperation. Now a few years ago, some clever people came up with the idea of instant messaging and MSN, Yahoo, AOL (ICQ) all quickly pushed different IM clients at the internet community. The hassle has always been that everyone has different clients, and some people have ended up having multiple clients to talk to different groups of friends. Wouldnt it be nice if these new personal network start-ups could all sit around a table and agree NOW on a standard for interoperability. Im sure that this suggestion would blow their business models - but come on, spare a thought for the user!

P.S Have just flicked over from a plain HTML "blog" to Blogger - it's making my life sooo mcuh easier! Do it!