The Fat Lady Sings
Check out this insightful analysis of Opera Unite by Chris Messina.
My take: Firstly, I think the concept behind it is a really neat idea. Democratizing the sharing of information on the web by giving everyone a web server embedded in their browser is inspirational, to say the least.
But when you look more closely, here is what Opera expects you to do:
- Adopt a new social networking platform (theirs).
- Oh, and it only runs in one browser (unless you want read-only).
- And that browser is one you've likely never heard of.
- And you need to convince all your friends & contacts to do the same.
- And instead of having one password, you (potentially) have a different password for each of your friends.
- And leave your computer and browser running and online all the time if you want your friends to be able to see your stuff.
- But it's all about freedom!