The one huge problem with Facebook identity that carries over into things like using it for a reputation system, etc. is that each person only has one identity. The immediate consequence is that I can't simultaneously maintain a profile on Facebook that makes me look cool to my friends and responsible to company recruiters. The long term consequence is that without a significant change in information management, Facebook won't be able to be an adequate identity (or reputation) provider, since people rely on the fact that their eBay self is not the same as their Facebook self is not the same as their Valleywag self is not the same as ....
This is a problem that I've been thinking about for a bit. I think what FB should do is make tags (or categories) specifying one's friendships, such as business buddies, casual friends, relatives, etc., with the default being acquaintances. Then, one could filter what content can be seen by whom.
It would be interesting to know how many users would vote with their feet based on this point.
Trying to "solve" this multiple identity problem is complex both from a personal as well as a technical perspective.
I suspect most people neither want nor need this additional complexity.
The people who really "need" it (i.e. those who are irresponsible maniacs but do not wish to appear as such) would not really benefit from it anyway. The thing about irresponsible maniacs is that if you sit down and talk to them for an hour (the typical duration of a corporate job interview) you can detect that either they are a maniac or that they have something to hide. Either way it's a no-hire. There is no need to dig through Facebook or Google to detect this sort of personality.
Many people already "solve" it by maintaining different accounts on different social networks. I use LiveJournal for keeping up with my HP fandom friends, planWorld for my Amherst friends, FaceBook for high school friends, and I've switched between C2/L:tU/Reddit/News.YC for programming/professional acquaintances. My identity in each is recognizable, but subtly different, since I'm writing for different audiences.
There's some cross-talk - many of my younger HP fandom friends found me on FaceBook, one of my Amherst friends found me on Reddit, and one of my middle school (!) friends found me on C2. But social relationships are sustained by groups, not individuals, so even if they find me they tend to lose interest in what I'm doing.
Using different services/accounts to narrowcast specific segments of your life to specific groups of people is a traditional use of social networking tools.
But this story is not about using social networking tools in traditional ways. The author is positing an emergence of new uses of social networking tools based on the reputations of the individuals within the network. If FB or some other service manages to be both big and a true business ecosystem new forms of business will emerge based on the reputations of the individuals within the network. These forms of business have the potential to attract a much larger segment of society to the social networks.
My point is that within the context of such a reputation-based, socially-oriented, business-friendly ecosystem people will prefer to have a single identity/reputation to manage. Simplicity will win over complexity when "typical people" are involved. And the ultimate winner will cater well to typical people rather than technical people or the users of the first N generations of social networking tools.
I am usually something of a Xobni fan, but this facebook 'praise and adoration' is a little over the top. I see a place for charging people to 'follow your lead' or take your advice based on your community reputation, but the article should have talked about this in a broader perspective .There are several reasons why this would be hard to implement within a facebook context AND absolutely no reason why it cannot be done by someone else.
Indeed, the first lesson of marketing: no one wants to write about all of our little startups, but they are starving for material about Facebook/Google/American Idol/etc.
The same thing happened with our "email me instead" facebook app. Writers needed a contrarian voice for their stories about the facebook love-fest; we represented discontent with facebook messaging and this put Xobni in stories from Australia and Germany as well as Venture Beat, CNet, and Gigaom.
