Google, Facebook And MySpace All A Little Friendlier
TechCrunch has reported Google, Facebook and MySpace adding some data portability to their services (links go to the respective articles). Data portability allows data from one service to be used with another service. This is extremely convenient for social sites and online services.
The advantage of these sites partnering with other sites is that each site isn’t an island of information. This means that Facebook could access your Plaxo account to find more of your friends or reverse that and your Plaxo contact card for Bob could have his latest MySpace picture as his contact avatar. Also, Twitter’s notices could be used to set MySpace status links or new pictures posted on MySpace will generate a link in Twitter. Think of all the Google services like calendar, docs, email and RSS reader and how they could be used in conjunction with Facebook or Pownce?
Of course, if you don’t use any of those online services this is all going to be greek to you. The basics are that this is a movement to make online services work together in a more open way. The result will be more convenient data sharing online. This is good for everyone even if you don’t use any online services.
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I noticed that MySpace just added a lot of applications. They seem to be the same ones used in Facebook. Then someone said that a lot of those applications had banded together somehow to make it possible for other sites like MySpace to use them. We’ll see how well it works.
Yeah. The applications are based on the OpenSocial code developed by Google and partnered with MySpace and a few other companies. Facebook isn’t specifically part of the OpenSocial system, but has been making comments about supporting it.