You are correct! What we refer to around here as the Open Container is a loose collection of technologies that let us do two things:

1. Let you, the user, put things in an arbitrary collection of modules, which in turn can be moved around and customized with a minimum of fuss. This is the "container" part of the name: we're not controlling how you present yourself anymore -- you just pick what you want to show, and it appears.

2. Accept and display information from outside the tribe.net universe. This is where it gets really interesting: you can now stream in information from wherever you publish it -- your Amazon wishlist, your blog on LiveJournal, whatever you want to share with your friends/fans on tribe.net. Thsi is the "open" part of the Open Container. We hope we'll become a convenient framerwork/clearinghouse for all the information you want to share.


"Open Container" is really an umbrella set of features with implications that reach far beyond the user profile -- the user profile is just where we decided to debut the OC first. You can look forward to similar features spreading to other areas of the site.

Brian's role was to extend our core technology to handle all of this -- he calls it "plug-in" technology, and it basically lets us support new services quickly and with relatively little hassle. You might say that in making our system open and modular for our users, we've made it more open and modular for ourselves, too.