Google, Facebook, MySpace Look To Unite

[Jitway]

A triumvirate of the two biggest social networking sites and the premiere search company have committed to changing the structure of the social Web by making their data portable.

 

Today, Google announced Friend Connect (website going live Monday night), a set of APIs for OpenSocial sites that allows social network data to be used on any Web site. Rather than widgetizing content from one site and injecting it into another, the goal is to ultimately make data equally useful to all sites through secure authorization APIs: OpenID, oAuth, and OpenSocial.

 

Shared information will include friends lists, profile data, status and presence details. Since Google is not itself a social networking site (although it does operate Orkut), it seeks to provide a gateway between them and third party sites that wish to use the data.

 

MySpace launched Data Availability on Thursday, which will allow users to dynamically share profile information and updates with other sites from a central location. Launch partners included Yahoo!, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter, and the News Corp. site said the project will roll out further in the coming weeks.

 

The next day, Facebook announced its Facebook Connect, what it calls the "next iteration of Facebook Platform," which allowed third-party developers to develop social applications for the site. When it is rolled out ---also "in the coming weeks"-- participating sites will be able to share Facebook users' friends lists, their "real identities," photos, and videos. The only launch partner disclosed Friday was social news site Digg.

 

All three companies have made announcements extolling the benefits of allowing social networks to "be social" with other sites, but whether they will work together has yet to be determined. At the moment, MySpace data cannot be shared directly with Facebook or vice versa, as these sites have a vested interest in keeping users away from competitors.

 

 

 

This could be a good thing or a bad thing. It is good that all the info can be taken with you on the web to other sites. The bad thing is that this will most likely cause accounts to get hacked and allow the pedophiles to get access to users info easier. Time will tell.

 

Source HERE

[Fatal Rose]

Sounds good.

[BlackKnight]

This is moronic. Wave of privacy issues, here we come.

[olaf]

This is moronic. Wave of privacy issues, here we come.

Yep. I've been waiting for this and worse for years -- when stupid people get on the Internet, bad things happen. This is one of the consequences and many more to come and no one will realize why this is a big issue until it's too late.

[Fatal Rose]

Well if anyone is dumb enough to reveal social security numbers, credit card info etc.. It's there own fault.

[Jitway]

Ya if you share too much like financial stuff you will get burned and I hope the young ones don't do this. I just hope this does not open the door to the pedophile frenzy.

[Lucandrake]

So should I delete my myspace now or later?

[Jitway]

NOW or you will be bent over and taking abuse of.