[chmike]

This is indeed a general problem. Facebook and google+ where response attemps. But my impression is that they failed because they didn't focus on this particular service to do it right.

I would push the vision further. We need a service to also publish, revoque and update public keys/certificates. You suggest to have this information restricted and share it as needed. But some people want this information public like people in business or companies. So the shared as needed is only a particular use case. You also want access control. We can't solely rely on sharing limits.

Another thing is that people should be able to have more then one such sphere/internet identity, one for professional activity, one for private activity, etc. One should be able to have throwaway identities or network identies without links to our real identity to preserve our privacy or security.

It's been some time that I was thinking of this need and of a possible implementation (i.e. DNS like). I would love to share my thoughs and participate in such project. You should be able to contact me at [e-mail].