Major social networking Web sites are beginning to bridge the exclusivity gap by giving their users an option to make their profile content available on third-party Web sites through Data Portability. Social networking addicts welcome this feature as it'll spare them the trouble of typing out information about themselves and building connections on different Web sites.
MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability that would allow its users to share their profile information with partner Web sites namely, Yahoo!, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter. Two other players -- Facebook and Google -- seem to have been working at the same time on a similar model.
Facebook is expected to announce "Facebook Connect" today, a facility that would allow users to share their profile data on other Web sites. According to speculations by Techcrunch, even Google is expected to announce "Friend Connect," which it defines as a set of APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third-party Web sites.
Facebook has been the stingiest in this regard so far. It has a history of blocking a user for sharing his/her Facebook information on a third-party Web site. Adopting data portability comes as a major step for the company.
Facebook will hereon allow users to connect their Facebook account with any partner Web site using a trusted authentication method. Users will be able to control privacy settings for the data being made available outside of Facebook. However, details regarding these settings are yet to be released.
On the other hand, Google's "Friend Connect" will allow any site to add a social aspect, and let them make and grow connections with other social networks. The company's OpenSocial API will allow compliant applications to work across any social network.
Data Portability for social networking sites seems to make for an ideal solution to maintain member loyalty. It works in a clever way -- it gives a member the feeling of roaming in a broader spectrum; however, actually the member still belongs to the parent social network. It works well for both the social networking site and its members.
It seems with this new trend in social networking, the world is going to be shrinking at a faster rate.
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