Just some ideas to consider as you design the next generation of Skypeweb.

Collective presence. In which countries are members of group X in? can you show a little chart? Are half the members of this group online and available for a chat? Can we define dynamic groups based on common presence attributes, such as friends planning to travel to Prague?

Faceted presence. What is shared with Whom under Which conditions? We set up rules of disclosure, and they vary from Skype to facebook to Amazon. Can I share my rules across networks? Can those rules apply to sharing objects across networks? So my Amazon wishlist is only shared with members of my Skype contact group "family" on facebook?

Presence attributes and dimensions. Presence is much more than availability or "mood messages." Presence is the wide range of signals we send to invite communication. You start with time (availability) and space (location). Then you add intention (what you want) and context. Contexts include areas of our lives like romance, work, exercise, sport, health support, politics, etc. How do you let me articulate my interest in wanting to talk with someone about "fame's downside" before my report is due? 

Presence federation. In the simplest case, availability, can I not only aggregate presence but also syndicate it? We might look to the architecture used in weblog ping mesh syndication, part of the plumbing of RSS.

Presence prediction. While presence is all about the now, it might be useful to accurately guess someone's or some group's presence. Given what is public about a person, how well can you predict that person's status and availability?

I'll be brainstorming these and other presence and digital identity topics over the next few weeks with friends and strangers at these events:

• Office 2.0 Conference and Unconference
  5-7 September, San Francisco, California
• Portable Social Network Hosted Conversation,
  September 7, San Francisco
• Marc Canter's Data Sharing Summit and the SocialNetworkDevCamp,
  Sept. 7th-8th, Richmond
• Web 2.0 Summit,
  October 17-19, San Francisco

If you're in the Bay Area this week, look me up. My mobile is +1-510-206-1138 and I'm on Skype too.

I'm putting together a list of thought leaders on this topic. If you'd like me to put together a one or two day presence workshop, I can do that too.