Marc Canter, who has been talking for some time about the need for a service independent method of handling digital profiles, has test-released People Aggregator. In addition to support for handles/pointers to multiple services, Marc has done a lot of work around granularity of FOAF files (Friend of a Friend -- a markup language for relationships.) Marc says the system will have:

[...] control over FOAF files - I've read a lot of feedback myself and I've read other folks have the impression that as soon as their personal data is in FOAF, that it'll be ripped off, scraped, used by others, etc. This is (obviously) a main reason why (you) researchers want to keep each person's FOAF file to themselves, but I hope you realize is that that's just not practical in the real world - so we're going to implement:

- private FOAF files - where NO ONE can access them, associate themselves with or basically even know about (why do you want that? Please bear with me)
- consensually controlled FOAF files - where only be consent can one associate or do anything with your FOAF
- public FOAF files - status quo, how they're dealt with today