After Myspace Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google Announces FriendConnect.

Brij — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:57:28 +0000

Two weeks, three announcements and wild west world of social networking is all topsy turvy. Following Myspace and Facebook announcement, Google today gave a preview announcement of FriendConnect. Goals of FriendConnect are:

Drive traffic: people who discover interesting sites can bring their friends with them, and can opt-in to publish their activities on those sites back into their social network, attracting even more visitors.
Increase engagement: access to friends and OpenSocial applications provides more interesting content and richer social experiences.
Less work: any site can have social components without hiring a programming team or becoming a social network.

I will see what more comes out of scheduled press conference. This is getting very interesting and options for developers are growing. In a true sense, walls are coming down and data is flowing across gardens :) Now I need to go and dig into APIs and make MessageDance dance across these newly discovered openness.

Update: TechCrunch has more details on the story:

So if you go to a Website that is part of Friend Connect, you will be able to sign in under your Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, Orkut, or Plaxo IDs (you choose which one you want to sign in under, with more options coming). Then you authorize the site to go out and retrieve your friend’s list from that network. Any of those friends who also happen to be members of the site you are on will then show up and you can interact with them.

Friend Connect is geared at the Long Tail of small sites that don’t even have any user information. It allows them to tap into bigger sites and piggyback on their user sign-in and registration, list of friends, and interactions between those friends. It takes advantage of many existing standards, including Facebook’s (it is not an official partner, but it Google is taking advantage of its published APIs). Of the many standards emerging, Glazer thinks that OAuth is the way to do it right.

Glazer admits that Friend Connect is but one small step towards the larger goal of being able to connect to any friend on any application, on any site. But it is not there yet. For instance, it doesn’t work with Google’s Social Graph API, and many more social and identity networks still need to be connected.

The bigger downside of Friend Connect is that Websites using it cannot mash up the data with their own to make compelling new applications. Glazer confirmed that the data will be sent to third party sites via an iframe rather than directly through a set of APIs (as Michael speculated on Friday). However, Glazer also says that he wouldn’t be surprised if eventually Google or somebody else makes it possible for Websites to combine the Friend Connect data with their own.

Basically, what Friend Connect does is gather this data from big social networks in whatever way they make available and then presents it in a uniform way to third party sites. It also works as a pass-through between those third party sites and the big repositories of social data. This eliminates any programming hassles on the part of small Websites that want to tap into these social networks, but it also positions Google as the central switch connecting all of these different identity systems.

So its a still in work in progress. I think iFrame level integration is a bummer. Oauth seems to be gaining traction so that’s good. Atleast developers will see their efforts protected around Oauth. Oauth is primarily used by service providers to allow user to give Server A permissions to use data residing on Server B. Like the way MessageDance user grant permission to MessageDance to go fetch Blogger credentials from Blogger service. (OpenID is different from OAuth in the sense that it’s more of a user browser context to server side communication. Users use openID to identify themselves and login to various web services. It’s not between services to services, which is what OAuth does).

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Myspace’s Data Availability - The walls are coming down

Brij — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:29:29 +0000

Facebook and Myspace are extremely busy in wooing developers. Yesterday Facebook announced changes in Profile display and API support. Today Myspace came out with a significantly expanded approach to data sharing. Or as they are calling it Data Availability. Myspace also formally joined Data Portability group.

Let's understand full significance of this announcement from developer's point of view. Here is a full press release (thanks to Silicon Alley Insider!)

LOS ANGELES—May 8, 2008—MySpace, the world’s most popular social network, alongside Yahoo!, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter, today announced the launch of the MySpace ‘Data Availability’ initiative, a ground-breaking offering to empower the global MySpace community to share their public profile data to websites of their choice throughout the Internet. Today’s announcement throws open the doors to traditionally closed networks by putting users in the driver’s seat of their data and Web identity. The launch of the Data Availability initiative marks the first time that a social Website has enabled its community to dynamically share public profile information with other sites.

“The walls around the garden are coming down—the implementation of Data Availability injects a new layer of social activity and creates a more dynamic Internet,” said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace. “We, alongside our Data Availability launch partners, are pioneering a new way for the global community to integrate their social experiences Web-wide.”

Data Availability—User Interface

Data Availability pioneers a new way for users to dynamically share their user generated content and data with websites of their choosing. The Data Availability initiative is founded first and foremost on the simple and comprehensive user control of their own content and data—users will have control over what information they share and who they share it with. Additionally, rather than updating information across the Web (eg. default photo, favorite movies or music) for each site where a user spends time, now a user can update their profile in one place and dynamically share that information with the other sites they care about. MySpace will be rolling out a centralized location within the site that allows users to manage how their content and data is made available to third party sites they have chosen to engage with.

Inside this opt-in framework, they will be offered the opportunity to share their MySpace profiles with the site they are visiting. MySpace, and its landmark launch partners, will be allowing users to dynamically share the content and data of their choosing including: (1) Publicly available basic profile information, (2) MySpace photos, (3) MySpaceTV videos, and (4) friend networks. Integration of the Data Availability project will roll to MySpace users and participating Websites in the coming weeks.

“The launch of Data Availability is an unprecedented move to further socialize the Web and empower users to control their online content and data,” said Amit Kapur, Chief Operating Officer, MySpace. “We are thrilled to begin this initiative with a world class suite of landmark partners and invite websites around the world to participate.”

Partner Website Functionality

Data Availability is about enriching existing Internet destinations with social functionality and valuable pre-existing user generated content and data. By empowering users with the ability to dynamically share, those destinations will create deeper levels of social engagement and new functionality throughout their site. As the online home to 117 million users

To ease implementation for participating sites, the MySpace Data Availability initiative uses OAUTH and Restful APIs as its core technology underpinnings. MySpace is using open standards in an effort to embrace the open source community and allow the implementation to be as non-proprietary as possible. Today’s announcement is the first step of MySpace’s larger data portability initiatives coming down the pipeline. MySpace is officially joining the Data Portability Project demonstrating our continued commitment to openness and open standards.

Data Availability on Yahoo!

MySpace’s Data Availability complements Yahoo!’s recently announced Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS), a company-wide initiative to open Yahoo! to application developers, unlock the rich social connections across the Yahoo! network, and enable users to customize and make more personally relevant their experiences of Yahoo! and other Internet services.

On Yahoo!, the Data Availability initiative may appear to users in a variety of ways. For example, users that have chosen to share their MySpace content and data with Yahoo! Instant Messenger might find their MySpace default photo, interests, and favorite music displayed to their Messenger contacts directly in the IM client. Additionally, MySpace users will be able to choose to display their data within Yahoo!’s universal profile or leverage it in Yahoo! Mail's smarter inbox, once those upcoming releases are deployed.

“Yahoo! believes in an open Internet that gives users the flexibility to make their Web experiences as relevant, social and personalized as they can. As a longtime collaborator with MySpace on a variety of projects, including the OpenSocial Foundation, we’re thrilled to support this new initiative,” said Ash Patel, Executive Vice President, Platforms, at Yahoo!. “The Yahoo! Open Strategy and MySpace Data Availability are a giant leap towards a more social and open Internet.”

Data Availability on eBay

Through the MySpace Data Availability implementation, eBay profiles can be easily enhanced with MySpace bios, interests, pictures, and videos. In a socially driven marketplace, this will yield a deeper connection between individuals. When browsing or transacting on eBay, the availability of external social information can help users make good decisions quickly about whom they can do business with, and perhaps even make a new friend.

"The MySpace Data Availability initiative will further enrich eBay profiles and create a more elaborate social experience for buyers and sellers worldwide," said Matt Ackley, VP of Internet Marketing of eBay. "As the world's largest social commerce site, eBay is dedicated to creating a social context and personality for the people with whom you transact."

Data Availability on Photobucket

MySpace's Data Availability initiative will allow Photobucket users to enjoy a more seamless photo experience with their MySpace profile. Photobucket users will be able to have a single view of their photos across multiple services, as well as opt-in to displaying their MySpace profile data in their Photobucket albums. Users will also be able to leverage their existing connections on MySpace to share their content on Photobucket more easily, without having to re-establish connections and friend lists.

"MySpace users invest a huge amount of time populating their profile and personal interest data. With the large overlap in users, the Data Availability initiative will allow Photobucket to utilize this profile data to enhance its own products," said Alex Welch, President of Photobucket. "The combination of the Data Availability initiative and the recently announced Photobucket Open-API provides new opportunities to create a more open web"

Data Availability on Twitter

Twitter profiles at present are primarily focused on current updates and are relatively sparse on user information. The MySpace Data Availability initiative enriches the current Twitter profile by empowering users to incorporate their MySpace profile content and data points previously not included in the Twitter product suite. Once the implementation is complete, a user will be able to bring in their MySpace content and data including their bio, blogs, and photos, ultimately making the Twitter site a more enriching site with content previously unavailable in its interface.

"Finding friends to follow is central to Twitter's value as a real-time communication utility." Says Biz Stone, Co-founder, Twitter. "This project enhances discovery and connectivity making Twitter more relevant and useful—we're very excited." worldwide, this groundbreaking initiative enables the larger Web to leverage the highly engaged and passionate MySpace global community.

So there you have it, in a nutshell category 5 marketing announcement. If implemented in full spirit (as claimed ) this will let developers (like MessageDance) focus on higher level user interactions and not worry about data requests. Myspace is a leader in social networking space and by picking leading players in email/IM (Yahoo), photo (Photobucket), commerce (Ebay), presence/micro-blogging (Twitter), they are laying down blueprints for the next generation social applications.

I have talked about Experience Graph in the past and I strongly believe Myspace will be pursuing experience graph strategy as against Facebook's plan to mine social graph. Both have merit and it's way too early in the post-social-network phase to declare who will come out as a winner.

For developers like MessageDance, this is a great announcement.

[Photo thanks to Dazzie]

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Brij's One More Idea » Myspace

After Myspace Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google Announces FriendConnect.

Myspace’s Data Availability - The walls are coming down