It seems that February is "launch a social aggregator" month. Second Brain launched publicly yesterday along with several other social aggregators (Yahoo buzz, Friendfeed). Second Brain, like other social aggregators, allows users to pull their social activities into one place. Friends can comment on items posted to a users account. From first look Second Brain offers a wide array of services that it can pull from, such as, user blogs, YouTube, Digg, del.icio.us, Flickr, Google and others.

My immediate thought is the social aggregator niche is already becoming choked with sites clamoring to be the "top dog". This is going to cause a good bit of confusion. Once the dust settles I believe there will only be 3 maybe 4 social aggregators that attract and keep users.

While social aggregation is interesting I am not sure if the idea is viable long term. Right now aggregation has a novelty value as it is relatively new to social media. My question is can the excitement last?

Earlier this month Iminta launched and Second Brain appears to have nearly identical features. I think until social aggregators have the functionality of posting to a users social profiles and sites rather than pulling from services their popularity will wane. Maintaining several social presences can become quite a chore, so having yet another site to visit and interact with friends is going to become less appealing as time goes on.

What I think social aggregation sites are going to end up doing is force users to maintain one or two social profiles. Groups (friends) will consolidate on one of several social media sites. Social users are going to become fatigued and only frequently select sites.

Don't get me wrong, I think social aggregation has a place in social media. I just don't think it is going to be that big of a deal a year or two from now.

As always I enjoy reading your comments!

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