From the department of location-based presence detection, Meetro has released an new version of their chat client. Meetro let's you see who is nearby, based on zip code, and includes a basic profile. They have a Myspace importer that pulls in your About, Music Movies, Places and other profile data. Nice.

Something they need to fix is being clear about the import process. I wasn't able to import my Myspace data into my existing Meetro profile. I just used Meetro to talk to the founder Paul Bragiel and he says they are overhauling the whole profile creation and import process.

This is classic Web 2.0 behavior. Web 2.0 is in a large part about taking back ownership of your data after seeing it disappear behind the walled gardens of the previous generation of internet companies who's business model was based on taking your information and doing with it whatever they pleased, including selling it up the river to the highest bidder.

I used to slurp down Match and Yahoo profiles into the ProfileDoctor system for easier editing, and have always approved of letting other services grab your information. It's called sharing, and as more companies figure out ways to become profitable with bi-directional data sharing through common, public API's, everyone will benefit.

Technorati Tags: meetro, open+profiles