Where the "hub" will be and Microsoft's live.com

Some interesting points made in the comments section of Orielly's Radar blog:

"Does Microsoft really get it? I think Live.com plus AdCenter and an improved Search will certainly help them catch up to the work going on in Google and Yahoo. Add to this Kim Cameron's work on InfoCards (Federated Trust) and the picture begins to become clearer.

Basically me the consumer will own my personal information and I will use it to personalise the information I recieve in my Live.com experience.

Therefore the adverts that appear are potentially more targetted. But how open will Live.com really be. Can I really use the Google Search bar instead of MSN if I choose? I doubt it!

IMHO we are all on the road to creating our own mashup client (My Hub) which is constructed by me simply by adding in those services (API's) that I wish to use - Flickr+Skype+Google+IM+Hotmail etc and I will use federated trust to validate my credentials to each of these service providers automagically.

Posted by: Sam Sethi at November 1, 2005 03:58 PM

Sam -- great comment. I was talking with a number of reporters, and Charles Fitzgerald of Microsoft, after the event, about my question and Bill Gates' answer, and it's clear that the question of where the "hub" will be requires a real shift in thinking. While we heard the vision is that the user is the center, what you describe is a lot closer to what real user-centricity looks like, at least on the alpha-geek fringes. But you have to realize that for ordinary users, it may not work that way. Even a configurable portal like MyYahoo or Windows Live is a stretch for many users.

The point is that there are going to be a lot of alternatives floated out to users, and that's good. No one has all this stuff right yet, and competition will help us all.

Posted by: Tim O'Reilly at November 1, 2005 06:05 PM"

So.. sure the utility of a tool can be evident but the interest and usability have to be present as well to make it popular. Like the wiki at work, Jessie was saying that people would like to make edits with a WISWIG editor. I personally prefer to spelunk the html.