Every social network strives to be this for people.

http://xkcd.com/927/

I think most people already solved this problem by joining Facebook.

Yes, it's obviously not quite the same thing. But it's a central place which (almost) everyone has joined. Many have listed their phone/email details, and if they haven't I can usually message them to ask.

There's a proposed RFC (which I believe will be accepted before the end of the year) which provides a standard (assuming acceptance) way to transport identities between services on the Internet - http://www.simplecloud.info/. It's backed by some pretty big players and we're adopting it as the new version of one of our identity APIs at Penn State.

There is currently no mechanism for deciding which parts of your identity are available to different people, and retrieval of anything not marked public would require that they identify themselves. I think the ideas below are great, and adding your friends, business contacts and acquaintances to different circles/spheres/lists is an easy way for you to manage them. The hard part (I think) is that identity needs to be federated somehow so that you know who is asking for your identity and therefore which fields to provide (A&A strikes again).

I'd encourage everyone who cares about solutions like this to read the specifications I've linked to, then read and participate in the mailing list ... the discussions are amazing.

This is really just an example of why there are SO MANY contact management apps. It's not a one-size-fits-all industry by any means.

1) The data.

This is usually just a spreadsheet, simple table, or CSV of names and emails, phone numbers, addresses, etc.

2) Storage and maintenance.

Where is this information stored so it can be retrieved and modified easily from ALL the crazy devices and software we have that needs access to it?

3) How we access and use this information.

Whether it's in an email client where you start typing the first letters of a name and the information shows up, or you get a call on your phone and it associates the number with a name in your database, etc. And how do you add someone new?

I think 1 & 2 are solvable with a standardized format and the Cloud.

It's #3 that will constantly, always, forever, be different for everyone. I don't need to do what the author needs to do in this post. I usually just need all my contacts in my phone. I've tried to help associates manage contacts, and they usually hate what I show them too (and many times they hate several options that I show them). Everyone is different.

Maybe the author should develop his idea. It's possible that his solution could scratch the itch of a couple thousand. Who knows.

This is indeed a general problem. Facebook and google+ where response attemps. But my impression is that they failed because they didn't focus on this particular service to do it right.

I would push the vision further. We need a service to also publish, revoque and update public keys/certificates. You suggest to have this information restricted and share it as needed. But some people want this information public like people in business or companies. So the shared as needed is only a particular use case. You also want access control. We can't solely rely on sharing limits.

Another thing is that people should be able to have more then one such sphere/internet identity, one for professional activity, one for private activity, etc. One should be able to have throwaway identities or network identies without links to our real identity to preserve our privacy or security.

It's been some time that I was thinking of this need and of a possible implementation (i.e. DNS like). I would love to share my thoughs and participate in such project. You should be able to contact me at chmike@dupif.com.

contact like calendar management is a massively Unsolved problem online. however this approach (a sort of yellow pages for everyone) barely scratches the surface.

there are many very good reasons for me to keep a copy (perhaps a local cache) of my own contacts details, but the big one for me is what did I contact them about, when and why. there are a few services attacking these - writethatname, ActiveInbox - but it's all a bit over the place. for example I am struggling to co-ordinate call logs on iPhone and Skype - hell I cannot even get my call logs off iPhone.

this is not a solution I fear to the main issue - logging contact events, not updating contact details

In effect, we have exactly this if your acquaintance's contact information is on Facebook and you link your phone's address book with them. You don't need to keep track of constantly changing information since it's all centralized in one location. The "spheres" you reference are akin to Google+ circles or Facebook's lists. You can set the visibility of your contact info to achieve something pretty close to what was described.

The upside of such an approach is that there is one central point of truth for everyone's info. Conversely, the downside is there's also one central point of failure.

You just might want to read a post I did a while ago about the same idea, packaged slightly different: http://momo.brauchtman.net/2012/02/09/distributed-management... .

Agreed. This is so common a problem that it makes perfect sense for there to be a completely _separate_ service out of it.

The commercial aspect is where it really starts to be complicated, though.

It's been ages since I checked, but I remember plaxo was supposed to address this kind of problems, what has become of it?

Yes, I agree with you that the way we manage our contact date is outdated.

The problems nowadays are:

1) If you include pseudonyms and literally all user data, you will earn the distrust of millions of users that don't want this data centralized in the databases of one company. (I know it is possible to figure out almost all the interconnections e.g. via IP, Cookies, Location data, your browsing history. But still they are given implicit. Handing all your user data to one company firsthand plays in a totally different league.)

2) This system, especially the automatic updates via sent out API calls, requires deep integration in countless pieces of software. Windows, Mac, Linux and all their ways of managing contacts, the corresponding mobile systems need to adapt and what about the business sector? You could counter that it is a standalone app and the user has the choice on every platform. And that would be the next problem. All the existing services (about.me, dooid.me, even the Gravatar, or even providing a downloadable or scannable .vcard file or QR-code on a self-hosted webpage) are not used by any majority of people. Why? – The majority simply does not submerge that deeply into the technology. Yet another service that bring yet more responsibilities (setting up privacy boundaries etc.) might be appealing to the techy-nerdy kind, but not at all to "Joe Average".

3) What this would need is huge company's backup. And to be honest, Google has had the chance...but they screwed it up. Google+. The idea behind the circles is great (hence the resemblance to your "spheres"?). But tying it to yet another social network and forcing it upon it's users is not the way to build a user base that trusts and accepts the platform. I don't believe any piece of statistic released talking of 400 Million registered users (of course, because they force it upon the Google Play and YouTube users) or the 100 Million active users (of course, YouTube commenters, still want to comment). If I check my Google+ Stream it is dead to 95% of my contacts. There is less going on than on facebook. (Which we all apparently distrust and has seriously lost the contact management game.)

All this leads me to the conclusion that the introduction of an important functionality like the one you describes can't be done by any kind of service.

It should become a "protocol". Maybe a vcard-protocol. And in the best case a P2P based one that is encrypted. Why? - My user data doesn't change every second, so there is absolutely no need for 99,99% availability. - Our smartphones are online almost 24/7 anyways. And in addition our various other internet access devices even increase that number ;) - Ot the information could be circled around in the P2P-network, highly encrypted. As the data size of maybe a profile picture and a bunch of contact details is not really an issue, this actually would be feasible. - It could be combined with PGP, maybe even use the very same keys. Which could and should increase the number of users encrypting their conversations. - The information would not leave the users hands unencrypted. - The possibilities are defined by the protocol and the user has to set up allowances (sphere permissions) accordingly on the platform he uses. - As you now can setup various IMAP mail accounts you could create various vcard-information snippets for all the various identities you want to manage. - A unique ID of course is necessary, this could be used for the NFC/BT or just motion-sensor/timestamp/location based ("bumping") handshake to exchange the information. The encrypted vcard-information package can of course be published directly or in form of a link/QR-code via NFC/BT/local Wifi. - It should not be file based to the user. - The encryption (I don't know if PGP allows this) should be able to terminate itself if the user didn't refresh the permission or didn't prolong the availability.

The big problem is...how can a protocol like this be made attractive to be used. One would need a group of manufacturers/companies, like Google with Android and it's web-based contact database and Apple with iOS and it's horrible contacts App.

The problem is...there is too much money in user-data... So I guess all of the above will remain a dream. *sigh

Yes, maybe contacts should be a protocol.

"The big problem is...how can a protocol like this be made attractive to be used."

I don't know. How did the email protocol become attractive? However that happened, I'm sure glad it's a protocol rather than something that only AOL or Facebook users have.

If you post something on Facebook and tell me about it, I can't see it because I'm not on Facebook. But you can email it to me, and you don't have to say "You're not on Gmail, sorry," and I don't have to say "You're not on Fastmail, sorry."