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Ever since Facebook opened its platform earlier this year so third
parties could offer "applications" that users could install as widgets
on their Facebook homepages, the company has been hailed as a
forward-thinking revolutionary. Other social networks are following
similar strategies, and in the end it could make for a more extensible
and portable ecosystem of social networks.
LinkedIn and IBM, for example, intend to make it easier for users to
access their social networks from other Web services and applications.
Multiple services on the Internet, among them Google-sponsored
Socialstream, claim to be able to allow users to post content and then
syndicate it to a variety of social networks where the poster may have
a profile. LiveJournal already supports single-sign-on system OpenID.
IBM's even talking with "a lot of the major social networks,"
presumably including Facebook and MySpace, to see how they might work
together and share information with one another.
But social networks are a long way from standardizing features and
communication, which may be a necessary step for widespread sharing of
information. The haphazard scaffolding of social networking means there
are no cross-network standards for profiles, for feeds of information
coming from users' contacts, or for the way "friending" someone is
handled.
Even the very definition of a social network isn't exactly perfect.
They typically contain profiles, some ability for a user to connect
themselves to others, some search functionality, and the ability to
communicate with other users. However, that's not always the case.
Meanwhile, Facebook, as well as some of the other social networks, are
relatively closed to the outside world. Everything there happens within
a Facebook bubble where any communication has to happen between
registered Facebook users. Facebook profiles aren't fully indexed by Google.
There are certainly possibilities. Something like Microsoft's CardSpace
could act as a cross-authentication mechanism, while OpenID could be a
single sign-on. RSS could be the standard for feeds of information.
Still, even if the technical challenges are solved, there's a bigger
sociological and privacy hurdle. And there may always be the tricky
problem of Web identity -- you can still be a dog and have nobody know
it on the Internet.
For now, Plaxo's Pulse might be an indication of where social networks
are headed: user control. Plaxo puts the user at the center, basing the
network on Outlook contacts rather than who's a member of the network
and includes feeds of information from places like Flickr photos,
YouTube videos, Amazon wishlists, and LiveJournal postings. The company
even recently introduced a LinkedIn synchronization and de-duplication
service for its own platform, allowing the Plaxo rolodex to grow with a
user's LinkedIn contact list.
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