One of the ideas put forward here by Dave Winer, that you should control your own identity on the Internet, is one I whole-heartedly agree with. I’ve done points 1, 4, 5 and 6 and think that I’ll do #2 soon. I’m not sure I care quite as much about #3 yet, although I agree that reputation networks built on this idea would be powerful if they caught on widely. I’ll have to give that more thought.
Certainly, it’s clear to me that when companies like Google and Facebook own the profile and data by which other people know you, you’ve ceded a good deal of control to them. I’ve been planning to move my personal data of value to my own site and only include pointers to it from other sites, and plan to continue down that path. Since I don’t live in the public eye like Winer it hasn’t seemed as important. But the more I use these social networks, the less I think that my public exposure matters.