In short I would like to have a technology that would shrink the world. Where I can experience all but full contact presence with my friends who I can find in a global context and not be limited to my immediate 20 mile radius of my local world. Robert Paterson: Making Blogging more Real - Developing Presence?
Presence-type systems invariable need the type of backend offered by social networks, which is why I still see an inevitable collision between the two. Indeed, TypeKey and TypePad people could even evolve into something like this.
This could be done with Flickr, including a chat widget for your blog so that people could IM into your Flickr space and vice-versa.