Google to launch Friend Connect on Monday, says TechCrunch
Following the pre-announcements from MySpace and Facebook (below), it seems Google wants to get in on the act. According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch:
Like Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google's Friend Connect will be a way to securely send personal profile data, including friend lists, presence/status information, etc., to third party applications, say our sources. The primary benefit of these services is to allow users to maintain a single friends list and to coordinate social activities across different sites that perform different services.
However, the services may not work the same way. The story says:
If what we hear is correct, Google's offering may not be as attractive as MySpace's and Facebook's. Google may be keeping a tighter reign on data, requiring third parties to show it directly from Google's servers in an iframe. By contract [sic], MySpace and Facebook are sending data via an API and trusting third parties not to abuse it (with strict terms of service in case they violate that trust). That flexibility also allows those third parties to do more with the data, including combining it with their own data before displaying it.
Well, Google already has a record of all your searches (some of them probably incriminating), probably reads your email and therefore has a list of your contacts, and maybe it even keeps your calendar. It could probably write software to dig out all the info you might put in a Facebook or MySpace profile, though you willingly handing it over might make it simpler to profile you for advertising purposes.
And although Google hasn't managed to create a widely-successful social networking platform (it launched Orkut in January 2004), it would be a simple matter to tie your profile to iGoogle and outflank both Facebook and MySpace.
Meanwhile, Yahoo and Microsoft have failed to launch "connect" systems (Microsoft Connect is a different kind of thing). And you obviously won't expect a joint announcement from those two....
Monday, May 12, 2008
Google To Launch Friend Connect
Google to launch social web Friend Connect
Following Facebook and Myspace, Google will join the social network data portability crowd to allow its users to port user data to partner sites, media reported Monday.
Google's Friend Connect will be a set of "APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites," speculated TechCrunch.
A man walks past Google Inc. headquarters in Mountain View, California, May 8, 2008. [Agencies]
Google has been taking a more open and distributed approach with its OpenSocial API, which allows compliant applications to work across any social network. By extension, Friend Connect would provide glue to allow any site to add a social dimension and build connections to other social networks.
Facebook Connect announced on Friday it would make it easier for people to share their favorite pictures, information and applications with family and friends anywhere on the Internet. MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability, with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter as initial partners for its effort to let members port their data.
The key for all the data portability efforts is that users have granular controls to manage their data and to maintain privacy and security. Facebook and MySpace have not fully disclosed how their privacy controls will work yet.
David Glazer, Google director of engineering, said in March the big challenge isn't the technology but applying existing and emerging standards, such as OATH (secure API authentication), OpenID (identity management) and OpenSocial APIs (application integration).
Following Facebook and Myspace, Google will join the social network data portability crowd to allow its users to port user data to partner sites, media reported Monday.
Google's Friend Connect will be a set of "APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites," speculated TechCrunch.
A man walks past Google Inc. headquarters in Mountain View, California, May 8, 2008. [Agencies]
Google has been taking a more open and distributed approach with its OpenSocial API, which allows compliant applications to work across any social network. By extension, Friend Connect would provide glue to allow any site to add a social dimension and build connections to other social networks.
Facebook Connect announced on Friday it would make it easier for people to share their favorite pictures, information and applications with family and friends anywhere on the Internet. MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability, with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter as initial partners for its effort to let members port their data.
The key for all the data portability efforts is that users have granular controls to manage their data and to maintain privacy and security. Facebook and MySpace have not fully disclosed how their privacy controls will work yet.
David Glazer, Google director of engineering, said in March the big challenge isn't the technology but applying existing and emerging standards, such as OATH (secure API authentication), OpenID (identity management) and OpenSocial APIs (application integration).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
