If I had to describe WebMii in a single sentence it would be this:

“WebMii is a vanity search on steroids.”

It’s that, and much more. The first thing you’ll notice is something called PeopleRank which, according to WebMii, is a visibility ranking.

The PeopleRank is the online visity score for someone. It is calculated by WebMii according to anyone visibility on the web.

The higher your PeopleRank is, the more you are visible on the net. The maximal PeopleRank is 10.

The PeopleRank is calculated based on the presence in each source of information balanced with the estimated Google PageRank of the source.

This is interesting in itself but without having an understanding of the ranking algorithm (and how it can be gamed) I’m not sure I’d put much faith in it.

Next you’ll see Tags associate with your name using Google as the source.

To my mind, my tags are pretty accurate except for a few such as “Connecticut” and “Simmons.” (I’m sure “Simmons” relates to my friend Chia-Lin Simmons with whom I started my podcast more than three years ago.)

Next are Photos associate with you using Facebook and Bing as the sources. Mine are all related to me except for one.

Bing gets a lot of play within WebMii – at the moment, it seems to be the sole source of determining Videos associated with you. Again, all pretty accurate except for one.

Facebook gets put to use in WebMii but in the context of video, nothing is shown. However, it does list some of my publicly accessible Facebook friends.

(Still with me? We’re almost there.)

Next are Related People which is also powered by Google. I have no idea how this works but it’s definitely not as accurate as the previous sections.

That also goes for the next two: Hi5 and Friendster. I’ve never been on Hi5 so this is completely innacurate. (Though I did create an account during this review.) I had a Friendster profile, I think. Based on the data here it looks like this might have been mine – the age is correct and my alma mater is in Poughkeepsie but I haven’t lived there since 1992.

Twitter is completely accurate. Next.

I know I created a MySpace profile at some point in my life but I couldn’t even tell you what it its. This is definitely not it.

Here’s some News about me from the last 30 days, also powered by Google. Five out of the eight listed are accurate. (Though “John Federico, MD” has a nice ring to it. My mother would be so proud…)

Why WebMii is using Yahoo to find associated Web Sites is beyond my comprehension. Then again, why they would use Yahoo at all is probably a good question, too. Four out of the five listed here are accurate.

Blogs associated with me are powered by Google. While each entry is accurate, I’m not sure why Google considers the Affiliate Summit Network on Ning.com to be a blog.

Finally, there are a list of Websites and Documents associate with my name. This seems to be the catch-all entry for “everything else” since web sites and blogs are already listed above – many of which are included in this list.

Once you’ve checked your “ranking” how often are you going to go back? WebMii is more interesting as a research tool than it is a tool for understanding your web profile. It’s good for finding out more about, say, your somewhat anonymous Twitter followers.

WebMii is definitely worth checking out, even for just a moment.

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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See How The Web Sees You With WebMii is a post from: TechStartups.com

Personal lifestream sites seem to popping up one after the other and the newest is Flavors.me.

At the current time they are in private beta and limiting the use of the site. Which for now is a good thing as they continue to polish features. Like adding accounts from Twitter which were down today and feeds were linking properly but not displaying titles or excerpts.

The UI is spectacular and the experience on the admin side is smoother than any other site I’ve used like this. In its current state Flavors.me is akin to what having early access to FriendFeed must have been like.

I was never a fan of FriendFeed. I used it because my friends did and popped in occasionally to respond to comments on some of my tweets. I avoided FF due to the UI. That of course is not why I liken it to Flavors.me, but because of knowing that it will be an interesting platform for lifestream aggregation.

The site has a designer’s touch but also allows the user to have a ton of control over the appearance. Think FF meets MySpace, in a good way – that would be portions of FF because Flavors.me currently doesn’t have a communication component that is visible. I’m not sure if they will but if they did offer it in the future I could see them grabbing quite a few FF users.

Currently, my only real beef is that on the homepage of the site Flavors.me is using a JavaScript Flash hybrid to display fonts. This used to called sIFR back in the day but I don’t know what the cool kids call it now. For mobile devices that support it, awesome. For those that don’t, fail. I would love to see a mobile version of  this site optimized for the iPhone.

Other than that, it is a likable service that very well could bridge the gap between the nerdiest lifestreamers and less nerdy moms, pops and nanas to put their lives on display.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

It Flavors.Me is a post from: TechStartups.com

I’m hesitant to use the term ‘brand’ since it is overused right now and a bit nebulous, especially when it comes to humans. I guess if your name was a brand then it would fit . . . but there thousands of brands with the same name, so maybe not.

Over the last few years with the rise of social everything online many people have arrived without the experience of the growing pains that made the market ready for these sites. With that, the newbies have arrived at the front gate to deliver gems on Facebook like, “In hell right now, that would be work!” Way to go genius. Don’t get run over by the forklift you rode in on.

It has been my desire for years that there were be some licensing that has to happen before people could hop online and make the same mistakes that people were making a decade ago. An education center would be fitting – like community annex night courses. Even cabbies gotta go to school.

I thought that since tomorrow is Thanksgiving and you might engage face to face with some people that aren’t so savvy, that you could share some words of internet wisdom with them. It. Is. Your. Job. To save them. From. Themselves. Share these of course after you have helped them remove 30 GB of kitty photos from the desktop of their Windows Me eMachine. Okay?

1. Don’t use Facebook or MySpace or Twitter at work
2. Don’t talk about your boss on the computer
3. Don’t ever upload pictures of yourself or Mom drunk
4. Don’t put pictures of grandma drunk on the internet
5. Don’t take photos of anything naked and upload it
6. Don’t threaten the bully from your 8th grade class on Facebook. We know he didn’t deserve to succeed in life but he did. Let it go.
7. Don’t contact anyone that you hooked up back in the day that Mom knows. That goes for you too Mom. Forget they exist and use your memories remember their sweet smell and freak moves.
8. Don’t tell your neighbor that his spouse is cheating on Facebook. Just don’t.
9. Don’t type anything into your computer that would cause Santa to leave you a lump of coal
10. Don’t evah, evah, evah upload a photo of your cat to the internet and caption it. You will never get hired for a job again – especially if I am the head of HR

That’s it. Now you can spend your Thanksgiving in peace after you lay down the law to your in-laws about ‘Managing Yourself Online’. ‘Cuz the internet is a job.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Managing Yourself Online: A Thanksgiving Guide is a post from: TechStartups.com

MySpace may have just released an update that could make a large dent in the technology and online community. MySpace has released a classifieds service on their network that’s powered by oodle.

The MySpace community is huge, but hasn’t been getting the media love that Facebook has of late. That doesn’t mean there still aren’t loads of people visiting the site on a regular basis. They’ve still got a lot of eyes viewing their pages and now those eyes are going to be looking at classified ads. The newspapers are losing money and the loss of classified ads revenue. All that revenue is going online and now MySpace is getting a piece of the action.

From my perspective you’ve got the traffic volume and user base to take advantage of a great opportunity. eBay used to have a lot more traffic and popularity than it does now. Part of that reason is all the fees and transaction hassle of using the site.

Oodle is listing millions of items from users all over the web and now MySpace users will also be seeing those items and uploading their own. In the current economic climate, I think even more people will start taking advantage of classifieds and the exchange of items in a personal and casual environment.

MySpace Launches Classifieds Service with Oodle is a post from: TechStartups.com

There are lots of people out there! Are they following you? Are you following them? Are they your friends? Your peeps? How many do you have?

I’ve got around 1200 followers on twitter and almost 1000 friends on Facebook and almost 300 connections on LinkedIn. I have a number of friends on MySpace but I don’t really go there much at all. There’s also a local social network here in Indiana we have called Smaller Indiana that I should be more active on but I’m not.

With all this connecting going on though, is there a point where it gets to be too much? Where does networking lose its effectiveness of balancing being helpful with just being overwhelming?

What’s the line that’s crossed where I can really no longer connect to anyone because I’m trying to connect to too many across too many multiple networks. Is there something to be said about being hard to find? I’m not so sure, but there’s got to be a sweet spot right?

Not too long ago I went through all my Facebook friends and got rid of anyone I didn’t actually know or meet in real life. The only caveat to that are people that I’ve only met online, but have worked directly with in some fashion.

All of these are valuable friendships in my opinion, but I need to figure out better ways to capitalize on each network in the best fashion.

What’s been your experience? How do you manage it?

How Many Is Too Many is a post from: TechStartups.com

I’m open to lots of websites. I join a new one at the rate of one a week it seems. I’ve been a member of one for quite awhile now, but I hardly ever visit. You’ve figured it out by now that the site I’m talking about is MySpace.

In my personal opinion, MySpace is like binary vomit of code presented in a wrapper of a horrendous website wrapper.

I know, I know… MySpace is cool. It’s a great place for bands to share music, which it is, it’s just not worth it for me to go there to find new music. Maybe MySpace is figuring that out as well too with their purchase of iLike.

Given my opinions of iTunes though, maybe MySpace is working to help me out. They’ve partnered with many of the larger music labels to work out their efforts with MySpace Music. If they could take their network of 50 million plus users and start to chip away at iTunes strangle hold on the music industry, I’d be the first to cheer them on in their efforts.

Even if they do that, I still won’t like MySpace until they get rid of the riff-raff and absolutely gag-reflex inducing animated, pimped-out page backgrounds.

That’s enough for me.

iHate MySpace Even If They Purchase iLike is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Staff Writer – Tyler Knott Gregson

In with the new, out with the old. Right? What happens when your “new” just so happens to be the “old” of your major rival? That’s the question MySpace and Facebook both have to answer now that MySpace has officially named Owen Van Natta as their chief executive.

In case you’re out of the loop when it comes to Social Networking big-wigs, Owen Van Natta just so happens to be a former executive at MySpaces largest rival: Facebook. According to reports:

“Mr. Van Natta’s appointment on Friday followed by two days the departure of Chris DeWolfe, a co-founder and chief executive of MySpace, in a management shake-up. Mr. Van Natta, 39, was previously chief revenue officer of Facebook. Most recently he was chief executive of Playlist, an online music venture. He has also worked at Amazon.com…While working at Facebook, Mr. Van Natta helped negotiate a $240 million investment from Microsoft.”

This isn’t the first major shakeup at MySpace and I have a feeling it won’t be the last. They’ve recently added to their lineup Jonathan Miller, formerly of America Online to help stir things up and redirect the MySpace ship. The bottom line is, it’s a ship that needs redirecting as they’ve lost a huge amount of ground over the last few months and years to Facebook.

Will this help? Time will tell, but having someone who helped make Facebook what it is, surely can’t hurt.

Facebook Executive Named MySpace Executive is a post from: TechStartups.com