Image borrowed from Googlified

Google Profiles came into the spotlight this week. Not brand new but finally gaining traction, it is a place for you to share your profile, including short biography and link hub for your various profiles and interests.

The profile can be customisable to allow others to email you without sharing your personal email address which is cool, although the whole profile is still limited in its function.

Naturally being a Google property it scores well on the natural listings with my profile now appearing at the bottom of page 1 for ‘Jamie Riddell’, and no doubt I expect it to rise to the top over time.

The growth of Google profiles will have ramifications for other profile sites not least Plaxo, and to a lesser extent, Linkedin. At the moment, the Google profiles are somewhat static so they don’t have the social connection and feed updates that characterise Plaxo, nor do they have the in depth business details found on Linkedin. Howrver, this being Google, I expect the Plaxo elements to come in over time and no doubt include Gmail/Contact/Calendar integration which then starts to put clear air between Plaxo and Profiles. If that happens, I would struggle to see the benefit of staying on Plaxo apart from maintaining a ubiquitous presence on all the key social networks.

What none of these services have yet to offer, and something I had hoped Plaxo would do, is to offer a centralised profile ‘blurb’ which populates each site you are on, much like Gravatar can centralise your avatars. Couple this with Open ID and we have the beginnings of a social network lynch pin.

Yet again, Google comes round the back with something that could be a long term game changer.

www.google.com/profiles/jamieriddell