Plaxo moving ahead. But where?

I just noticed two new features from Plaxo (since the Pulse and OpenID ones I mentioned here).

First, they have launced an Online Identity Consolidator. This has been mentioned by Robert Scoble and Kristen Nicole at Mashable.

Here I learned something new. The use of rel='me' linktag. [Note to self: a) read more on this b) add to my sites]. The source code is provided as open source.

This is one step towards how my multiple online identitiers can be easily tied together.

Second, Plaxo have enabled the use of yourname.myplaxo.com (I am at http://myrberger.myplaxo.com/). A way for you to make some parts of your Plaxo profile available on a web page. This also ties into the first feature, as the myplaxo.com page adds rel='me'-tags to sites you have specified.

I am a bit concerned over this second one, as it seems to publish information I specified to be available to people who already know my work email address (and keep it in Plaxo). Will this mean that this information can be collected by spiders and bots? I have not found a way to specify what shall be published on the myplaxo.com page versus what information is "public" to Plaxo users who know my email address. Any comments from Plaxo?

Still I see Plaxo as very much targetting advanced business users and social media early movers. Still missing a really good consumer (mass market) proposition.

It is however interesting to see Plaxo move ahead in this space. I already like the address book synchronization features (but when do we get Gmail sync..?). The recent additions takes Plaxo further into the social networking aspects. Where will they go from here? And where are the other players heading?

Plaxo now supports OpenID

I have used Plaxo for some time, and seen the service evolve. It is a useful service and I like it.

It is still a business user oriented service. If Plaxo can take the leap over to a true consumer value proposition it will be even more interesting.

Plaxo recently introduced the Plaxo Pulse. A feature very much in line with a number of new and evolving services like Pownce.

I just noticed that Plaxo announced OpenID support. Just before the summer I looked around to see what the current state of art OpenID sites offered. I never got around to use it actively. Now that Plaxo, that I already use, supports OpenID it might be useful. Have a look here and here for more on OpenID.

A quick look reveals that initially Plaxo only is an OpenID consumer. This means that I still need to use another OpenID provider. Not a big issue as such, but it is not until one of the services I use more or less daily acts a as an OpenID provider I will embrace the concept fully. Come on Plaxo, when will you implement this part?