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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

Maybe there's a market for a social networking site that let's one maintain sets of identities, segregated (or joined) by groups or "circles" of people from different facets of their life?

I know we often talk about separate facebook accounts for work/regular life people, but why not for online identities as well?

FB doesn't allow this (nor do any other social networking site I'm aware of)...

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Google Circles was supposed to do this, but it turned out that the entire product was a misunderstanding.

A better way to maintain private circles is through closed Facebook groups.

If you want to go one step farther and talk freely/anonymously among friends and colleagues, see my comment below. I am working on a startup that does just that.

okcupid works like mixi in this way (and a lot of other ways, too). It's a shame that they call themselves a dating site; they're really a social network for people who met online.

I would love to see those guys pivot, and release a multi-identity facebook killer.

Not that they need to (I think they are bootstrapped), but it would be cool.

They also just got acquired by match.com, so probably not happening.

Well, I hope they can vest soon.

That only works as long as the segregation is securely maintained. The risk of hacks, subpoenas, or employee misbehavior is too high to make such a system trustworthy, in my mind at least.

The best and simplest way is to simply maintain separate accounts, such that the separation is enforced in your head.

Appleseed and The Diaspora project both have "life-aspect" separation as explicit goals.

Closest thing I know of is Ning.

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