The Social

As part of the Le Web conference in Paris, News Corp.'s MySpace announced that it has taken a deeper plunge into the data portability pool.

The social network has announced its support for Google Friend Connect, which launched in full last week, and is using the standard to help power a new set of tools called the MySpace Open Platform. In conjunction, MySpace has ditched the distinctly unsexy moniker of "Data Availability" in favor of the new sobriquet "MySpaceID" for its universal log-in project. The Open Platform, in addition to MySpaceID, encompasses its OpenSocial-compatible app platform and the Post To MySpace sharing feature.

Right now, with MySpaceID, members can log in to partner sites with their MySpace usernames and find which of their MySpace friends use those partner sites. In the future, it'll also synchronize feed activity much like the rival Facebook Connect and allow MySpace members to register for third-party site accounts with their MySpace URLs.

Along with Google Friend Connect, MySpaceID was built with open standards OAuth, OpenSocial, and OpenID. MySpace, as well as Google, is one of the founding partners of the OpenSocial Foundation.

MySpace also announced the first two partners for MySpaceID: European mobile giant Vodafone and personalized home page service Netvibes. It still hasn't yet rolled out log-in credentials for the original Data Availability launch partners--Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo--but product manager Max Engel says those are still in the works.

Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect both launched last week, spurring a return to the social-networking turf wars and power struggle for control of the almighty "social graph."

This post was updated at 3:17 PM with comment from Google's David Glazer.

A post Thursday on Facebook's developer blog explains that the social network has suspended participation in Google's "Friend Connect" project, citing a violation of its internal terms of service.

"Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we've had a chance to evaluate the technology," the post by Facebook employee Charlie Cheever read. "We've found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service."

In other words, while Facebook users would manually opt in to Friend Connect, they would not have control over the third-party sites that would then use Friend Connect through Google's API. "Our terms of service, for privacy reasons, have always forbidden redistribution of other Facebook information that an application takes," Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said in an interview with CNET News.com Thursday. For example, "where applications have tried to use Facebook data and pass it to third-party ad targeting networks to target their ads, we've shut down those applications."

According to Kelly, the social network never actually had a formal partnership with Google in Friend Connect, which allows owners of Web sites to add social features using the existing APIs from sites like Hi5, Plaxo, and Facebook. "There wasn't participation to start with. That was sort of a mis-impression that may have been formed by their release," he said. "We weren't briefed on how the Friend Connect product was going to work."

David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, told CNET News.com that Google was "disappointed" with Facebook's decision. "(It's) a very simple issue. We think that users should be in control of their data," Glazer said. "We think that Friend Connect at all steps puts users in control of their own data, at every step of the way, and we're disappointed that Facebook disabled their users' ability to use Friend Connect with their Facebook friends. It's that simple."

Facebook got into a privacy snafu of its own when it launched an advertising program, called "Beacon," that sent users' third-party activity on partnering retail and social-media sites to their Facebook profiles. The Facebook user base as a whole didn't seem to care much, but a few vocal privacy advocates said that there weren't adequate controls in place. Facebook eventually modified the application after a series of PR skirmishes that the company likely doesn't want to repeat.

Last week, Facebook announced that it would be extending its API to make data portable to external sites through Facebook Connect. According to Google's David Glazer, the concept sounds promising but Facebook hasn't said much about the technicalities yet. "I'd like to see it when they launch it," Glazer said. "We have not seen any information about Facebook Connect other than a press release. We like the intent stated in the press release, we think it's the same intent they've stated all along. We liked it earlier and we still like it."

As for the overall industry response to Google's Friend Connect, Glazer said, "I've been thrilled with the reception."

Representatives from Facebook told CNET News.com that the specific sections of the terms of service in question are the ones in which Facebook stipulates that developers using Facebook's API "may not store any Facebook Properties in any Data Repository which enables any third party (other than the Applicable Facebook User for such Facebook Properties) to access or share the Facebook Properties without our prior written consent" and "may not sell, resell, lease, redistribute, license, sublicense or transfer all or any portion of the Facebook Properties, or use or store any Facebook Properties for any purpose other than as specifically authorized herein."

Google Friend Connect, Facebook Connect, MySpace Data Availability, OpenID, DataPortability: Managing a bunch of different log-ins and passwords suddenly seems easy and straightforward.

Within a matter of days, some of the biggest names on the Web announced new projects that all have a roughly similar aim of making it possible for Web users to have a single social-media identity across the Internet--"data portability," as the general term has come to be known. MySpace.com was first out of the gate with the announcement of Data Availability, a way for members of the News Corp.-owned social network to share their profile data with partner sites including eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter. The next day, Facebook launched Facebook Connect, an extension of its developer API so that third-party sites can incorporate Facebook authentication and user identities.

The Google-created Friend Connect, announced Monday, is a little bit different. With its goal of bringing the connectivity of the social Web to its less social online brethren, the project takes a cue from two much lower-profile social-networking strategies: MyBlogLog, a Yahoo-acquired widget manufacturer that lets readers of popular blogs socialize with one another; and Flux, launched by Viacom to provide interoperable social features to its own Web sites but open to other participants as well.

Flux, developed by an old-media powerhouse that didn't exactly have much social-networking cred to fuel it, and start-up MyBlogLog, which thus far has failed to break out beyond the tech blog community, haven't been success stories (yet). Will having the world's biggest hubs of social networking and developer activity make the playing field any different? It's a positive sign that Google and MySpace have pledged to use open developer standards in their respective projects; Google, for instance, will take advantage of OpenID, OAuth, and the OpenSocial standard that it developed in-house before spinning it off as an independent organization. Facebook hasn't released technical details yet.

But one prominent data portability evangelist hinted that we're at an inflection point where the social Web could either become more connected or just more confusing.

"Any time that data becomes accessible, preferably with open standards, is a good move toward the open data portability vision," said Chris Saad, the entrepreneur spearheading the DataPortability Workgroup, a consortium of techies working toward the common goal of translating identities from one social site to another. "What's effectively happening now is that we are actually two or three steps closer toward doing proper interoperable data portability, but we all need to continue to work closely with those vendors and the rest of the community to make sure they evolve in the right direction."

Saad characterized the Facebook, Google, and MySpace announcements as "internal brands that are technically the beginning of a data portability play." All three companies have representatives in the DataPortability Workgroup, even though none of the week's announcements were developed in conjunction with the group.

"I don't think their job is done, and I don't think it's inevitable," Saad said. "We need to keep a watchful eye on the fact that these projects are actually evolving toward the best practices (of DataPortability) as opposed to trying to fragment the market."

One thing to keep in mind is that there's still time for all three of these projects to change and evolve before any Web users actually see them in action. Facebook is not yet at the point of releasing the technicalities of Facebook Connect other than the fact that it's an evolution of its existing API; MySpace's Data Availability is rolling out slowly with only a few launch partners. A general launch of Friend Connect, Google director of engineering David Glazer said, will take "months."

In the meantime, expect plenty of speculation, plenty of criticism of "walled gardens," and at least one claim that data portability is dead in the water before it's even taken off. This is tech blogging we're talking about--would you expect anything less?