Your online presence, that is…

“If you’re reading this post, there’s a good chance you have multiple online profiles scattered across various services, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and Twitter. And one problem you may face is pulling all of this information together to build a single online identity — be it for personal use, or to create a professional online profile. Flavors.me is a new site launching today that looks to make this as simple as possible, and it does so with flying colors. After a three month long private beta, the site has just launched to the public.” Source: Flavors.me: A Dead Simple Way To Pull Your Online Presences Into One Place

I tried flavors.me. It’s cute. My take? It’s primarily geared toward casual online users that what a kind of internet ‘business card’ that puts all your online properties in one place…

If you’re really serious about getting it together on the internet, there are two tools that I recommend you use; Retaggr and Google profiles…

Retaggr has been around longer than Google profiles and I started using it over a year ago. Retaggr, which identifies itself as the ‘definitive online profile’ allows you to add your user name to any of the hundreds of social media tools they have inventoried. The result will be a nice profile like this that brings together all the stuff you’re doing online — they even give you a way to include the profile in your email signature!

More recently, Google has begun to offer a similar type of service. While it does not offer some of the bells and whistles that Retaggr [like widgets and gadgets, etc.] it does have the advantage of being smack on the Google backbone…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f2ywgldeiY&feature=player_embedded

Fortunately/unfortunately, we’ve read this book before and Google wins in the end — at least for the next 5 years or so. So, if you’re going to pick one or the other, check out Google profiles if you’re serious about putting together a social media dashboard for people you are hoping will find you…