Thus, there are a number of sites that are intended to help put all of your online presences in one place. I’ve tried a few of these aggregators. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, so check them out, and see which options might work for you.

DandyID

Of the services I discuss here, DandyID is the easiest to set up, because it doesn’t try to do too much. This is a simple service that creates an online profile showing your name, bio, contact information, web links, and your online identities. You can specify your online identity for over 330 social networks, including sites from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and Poland. Plus, you can add sites not on its list.

When you first sign up, DandyID has an option for importing contacts from services like Gmail, although the import failed for me, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to try again. I’m not sure what advantage you get from importing your contacts, anyway.

The profile page DandyID creates is very basic and not very customizable. But Facebook users may choose DandyID because it offers a very nice app that allows you to embed your online presences into your Facebook page.

Retaggr

Retaggr bills itself as “the modern day equivalent of a business card.” Aliza wrote about this service last year, and noted how it had improved a few months later.

When you sign up, you’re taken to a well-designed form where you provide Retaggr with information about yourself, and about the places you have online presences. I counted over 180 different social networks, and you can add sites not listed. (Apparently, you can import some of this information if you have a FriendFeed account, but that option didn’t work for me.) You can also add information about groups with which you are affiliated, and widgets allowing people to IM you directly.

You get three ways of displaying the information you’ve entered:

• A profile page on the Retaggr site (and which can be used with a custom domain name if you buy its premium service). The page can be set to display your status from Twitter and Facebook, blog entries and even pictures from Flickr.
• A virtual “business card” that can be embedded almost anywhere on the web, and in email signatures.
• An “add me” button that can be used to encourage others to connect with you.

ClaimID

While you can use ClaimID to list your profiles on social networks, the site is really about aggregating any web page or site that you wish to “claim,” either as author or subject. This is done by adding MicroID code to the web pages in question to show you have access to them.

So instead of offering you a list of social networks, as DandyID and Retaggr do, ClaimID offers a “Post to ClaimID” bookmarklet that you install in your browser, then click it whenever you want to add a site to your ClaimID page. You can then organize the links into categories and annotate them as you wish.

This site might be a good way for, say, writers or web developers to put together a portfolio, although if you don’t need ownership verification, it would be easy to produce a similar-looking site with basic web page editing tools.

GizaPage

As Scott discussed recently, GizaPage‘s concept is simple: One URL displays a series of tabs showing the social network sites you select. Web developers will recognize that this is essentially a “Web 2.0″ version of HTML frames, with options that allow the GizaPage owner to select who gets to see what. I like the concept, but the site seems often to be slow and buggy for me. But it has potential, and is definitely worth watching.

Chi.mp

By far the most comprehensive option for managing online identities is Chi.mp, which Darrell recently wrote about. Read his review for details; I’ll just say that Chi.mp offers many options that none of the above services do, notably:

• A custom domain name as a standard feature (optional with Retaggr).
• The ability to show different information to public, work and home groups.
• Some customization of the site’s template.
• Twitter-like posting of status and images.
• Contact management (Chi.mp calls it the “Ultimate Black Book”).

Because Chi.mp has so many features, it takes more setting up than the other options, and, I suspect, more maintenance. But it may be an attractive option for those who need a hub for their web presences, and are willing to spend the time to use its features to the fullest.

Conclusion

There are a number of other services for aggregating social network identities. Many of these products are in beta, or just don’t seem to work very well. I’ve tried a few, and will hold my opinions until we see how they develop. Like the social networking field itself, I’m sure that the best services will survive, and others will fade away.

For now, though, I found Retaggr to be the most useful service for managing online identities, although signing up for DandyID may be worth it just for the Facebook app.

How do you manage your social identities?

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Keeping this client request in mind, I decided to try out FirstPagr. FirstPagr describes itself this way:

… a tool to make a simple one-page website. If you are like us, you have blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon and so on. Make a simple introduction page with FirstPagr. Create lists, list items with links, descriptions and images, and drag and drop lists and items.

I signed up for FirstPagr and have to admit the process was a bit of a struggle because it requires OpenID.

FirstPagr’s interface is clean and simple. As you know if you’ve read any of my posts here, I’m a big fan of simple.

Start your page, add a list, add a link to the list, and include images and descriptions if you’d like. To experiment, I added a few of my blogs, links to a few client sites and links to other web sites of mine. I didn’t include images or descriptions so the result was a basic page with categories and names of sites that were clickable. Fast, easy, plain vanilla.

Moving list titles around or site titles was a cinch – just drag and drop to reorder. I don’t think there is a way to rearrange the lists and links into columns although that would be a very useful feature to make it even easier to access links without having to scroll down a very long page. A sample page made by Inomove Lab, the creator of FirstPagr, included graphics and descriptions, however, that made the page a lot longer to read and access the links.

Some things I will have to check into is how to create more than one FirstPagr page if they are requiring that you use OpenID. Will I have to create more than one OpenID account and then wouldn’t that defeat the purpose? Also, I couldn’t find a way to create more than one FirstPagr page. Maybe they aren’t thinking that this could be useful, however, I can see using FirstPagr for more than just that page leading others to my social networking sites. I could use FirstPagr for:

1. Links to media clips - Creating a link to online media clips can really be streamlined with FirstPagr and include an excerpt of the article and an image. I’ll be recommending this to my client, however, will also guide them in the creation of their OpenID account.
2. Links to login pages - This is something I have wanted for ages and was just thinking I’d have to code it all by hand. I want a single private page where I can access all of the login pages for all of my social networking sites and then additional similar private pages for my clients so I can run through all the sites, make updates, accept friend requests, etc. without having to use bookmarks or type in the URL each time. Basically a launching pad for social networking tasks.

Overall, being able to create a page of links with ease and make it available to the public -or keep it private – is incredibly helpful, and I bet over time, I’ll come up with many more uses for this simple tool.

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