Last week at an so-called executive update for a big publishing company I talked about YASNs in the context of communities and networks.

How YASNs are walled gardens.
How they often are positioning themselves as the ‘only’ channel of communication.
No export, no migrating your content, let alone your network, to another platform.

And then I heard myself say it:
“They are also separating your real live networks and communities from their digital representation on-line.
That is why it is exciting to see services that allow you to take your digitally represented network with you into the physical world. With tools like Jaiku (and not Twitter!), Plazes and Imity, a bridge is build between your real world interaction and your on-line interaction. Augmenting each other, strengthening each other. They’re mobile clients as well as yasns.”

The death of YASNs.
I’ve said it before, but this time I heard new meaning in my own words. The coin dropped so to speak.
So when PeopleAggregator is an answer to the walled gardens, and maintaining too many profiles…will it also start allowing me to take my network with me to the place where it matters: my physical world movements and face to face interactions? Marc? Paolo?

Or will the Plazes’s Jaiku’s and the Imity’s take yasns to the next stage of evolution?

I now wonder when I will be deleting my profiles at LinkedIn, Xing, Tribe or Hyves and such. On the other hand, I still have a profile at Orkut and Ryze…. 😉