Portable Contacts Official Site

Through Portable Contacts, users can easily access contact lists of their friends, across multiple websites. The system uses the same data format as is used in the OpenSocial REST protocol. However, in this case, all his other data remains private, because the authentication mechanism, ‘OAuth’, allows access to only certain parts of the user’s data – in this case the contacts list.

In order to use Portable Contacts, webmasters must register their domains and get an OAuth key. Once that is done, they can start testing the system through Plaxo’s Portable Contacts.

For almost a year now, the idea of data portability has been discussed, and most sites want to ensure their user privacy and security is protected. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have already made APIs available to developers, but each of them is unique and proprietary.

Now seems like the right time to provide a common open spec that can be used by everyone to systematise and simplify the procedure.

Apart from providing this secure and common access system, Portable Contacts aims to lay down well specified authentication and access rules, provide standard libraries that are compatible with all sites and make the entire procedure as simple as possible for users.

Once all the websites accept this standardized system of Portable Contacts, users will be able to have much larger lists of contacts, as they will be able to access the contact lists of their friends safely from any website, and that should make social networking a lot more fun.

iGoogle allows users to personalize their Google Search homepage through the addition of RSS feeds, widgets and then organise them in tabs and themes. New apps have been created within iGoogle to allow greater social interaction.

An example of this new facility, as reported on TechCrunch, can be seen in the My Google Book Search Library widget. As the name implies, users can search for various books they are interested in and create their own digital library. Now, whenever a user with an open social profile accesses this gadget, they come across an option asking them if they want the gadget to “know who I am and access my profile”. They also have the option to “Post updates to my friends group”.

It is likely that this facility has been added in conjunction with Google Friend Connect, which Google has been trying to popularise recently, in order to access the user’s profile data.

Application developers working for Google have been working on new apps and social features for various iGoogle gadgets since April last year, which indicates that Google is serious about making iGoogle a social platform.

The modified Facebook platform is called ‘Facebook Connect’. Once the platform is launched, all social networks will become compatible with Facebook; that is to say, it will be possible to run Facebook applications on other social networks with Facebook acting as the central hub.

AOL-owned Bebo already has a tie-up with Facebook for accessing the site. If the open source project comes through as expected, other social networks will be able to run Facebook applications, without having to ink individual deals. They will be able to map the APIs from Facebook, using FBML (FaceBook Mark-up Language), FQL (the query language), FJS (their JavaScript Library), and the Facebook API.

Putting it simply, users of Facebook Connect will be able to interlink with any partnering website, at any stage. Users will be able to carry their real identity – name, profile picture and other basic information – to all websites. Users will also be able to take their friends from Facebook to any site they wish.

Facebook promises that user information will be protected and be kept up-to-date at all times. In their own words:

“As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.“

Reporters on ZDNet as well as TechCrunch see the move by Facebook as direct competition to and an improvement on Google’s OpenSocial. If Facebook follows the same route as OpenSocial, it will be possible for other networks to modify Facebook applications and use them on their own platforms. However, getting these applications on the official Facebook platform, would require prior sanction by Facebook.

Google, MySpace and Yahoo! have all supported OpenSocial, thus cutting off Facebook to a large extent. This did not matter to Facebook while its user volumes were sky-rcoketing. However, now that their user numbers have already started declining in the USA, they will need to take some bold steps to maintain their position among other social networks.

According to Balogh, they are “rewiring Yahoo! from the inside out, to create a development platform at Yahoo! that will literally open up all of the assets of Yahoo! to developers across the Web in a way that [they] have never done before.”

The open strategy aims to make the consumer experience throughout Yahoo! a social one. As a first step towards doing so, they have invited a select group of developers to start using SearchMonkey – the Yahoo! Open Search project that was officially launched in February.

Yahoo! SearchMonkey

TechCrunch has provided a detailed write up about creating applications and enhanced search results with SearchMonkey.

Y!Open, the first stage of this strategy is due to launch sometime later this year. The overall strategy, though, is not limited to just search. It aims to open up all parts of Yahoo! such as Yahoo! Mail, Frontpage, MyYahoo!, Mobile and others.

All these services will be available through a single unified profile, and Yahoo! Mail will be its centerpiece. This way all existing customers from its various sites will automatically be integrated into the new social area, instead of having to sign up for multiple sites.

A central application platform will be the base on which developers can host or hook in applications. Current APIs will be developed further, along with OpenSocial, so developers can build more applications and distribute them across the Yahoo! spectrum.

Yahoo! Application Platform (Y!AP) is also due to be launched soon and is expected to give direct competition to the Google App Engine. Y!AP will allow developers to host a certain number of applications for free. Developers will be able to move data from within the network to other networks. E.g. The Yahoo! contact list could be integrated with Plaxo.

Eventually all of Yahoo!’s properties will be amalgamated into one macro social site and this will optimize usage of its underutilized social graph. This will be a rewiring of Yahoo!’s properties in a big way. The idea is to make it easier for users to share information with other users on other sites and thus keep up with social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

No definite time frame has been set for all these initiatives, so only time will tell how much of this will actually occur and whether it will really be serious competition to Google. Talks of these open initiatives have been heard off and on since last September. Critics think the new announcement are just futile attempts from Yahoo! to try and maintain their foothold in the market. One also wonders if all this will make any difference to Microsoft’s takeover plans.

Google’s social network application platform, OpenSocial is a means by which users and developers can access various social networks at the same time to improve their efficiency from chat to messaging to games to sharing of news, information, entertainment etcetra.

OpenSocial was launched in November 2007, and has support from the likes of MySpace and LinkedIn already. Yahoo! will allow users to ‘socialize’ with the millions who are already part of OpenSocial through one of its partner social networks.

The inclusion of Yahoo! will increase the distribution of applications for developers, and more websites will be able to join in, thus providing more features for all users. This move by Yahoo! will give an unimaginable number of opportunities to its users to create and publish more applications.

MySpace, Google and Yahoo! will also join forces to create a non-profit organization, which will be along the lines of the OpenId Foundation, to ensure that OpenSocial becomes a widely-used open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web.

“Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users,” said Wade Chambers, Vice President – Platforms, Yahoo!. “Our support builds on similar efforts with the OpenID community and will expand the opportunity for developers and publishers to benefit from an open and increasingly social web.”

A new website, OpenSocial.org has been launched to serve as the main source of documentation and information about OpenSocial.

www.opensocial.org

Microsoft has also launched a social network initiative this week. Yahoo!, however, is not involved with it and has instead chosen to join forces with Microsoft’s nemesis, Google, in support of their social networking platform. While this might not have been a deliberate snub, it will definitely not go down well with the folks at Redmond who are currently threatening to acquire Yahoo! in a hostile bid, if need be.

OpenSocial will be accessible at the URL: http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial, which will go live on Thursday.

When launched, OpenSocial will consist of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, which allow developers to access core functions and information on social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Unlike the most popular social networks, OpenSocial will allow developers to code using ordinary JavaScript and HTML. This will help it gain tremendous popularity as it precludes the need for application developers to learn and code in various proprietary languages created by the numerous social networks.

Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle are the platforms that have already agreed to partner with Google on OpenSocial. Application developers Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide are also on board. Interestingly, all these application developers have seen great success on Facebook.

Hints that Google might plan to expand further into the social networking arena surfaced last month when a leaked video showed Google employees discussed the company’s plans to introduce more social features into Google Reader.

Advertising on Social Networks

Google has not mentioned any specifics at present about whether or not advertising will be accepted, but it is obvious that this will be their way to gain access to most of the popular social networks without needing to buy them outright!

Once a number of developers build popular apps that get included by scores of users on their profiles, Google will be able to easily set up revenue-share schemes, similar to AdSense for regular content publishers, which will allow developers to include ads in their apps and make money for themselves and Google with minimum effort. The image below shows what this might look like conceptually:

Rather than using brute force to gain access to a number of users, Google has used a cunning method to reach the same attractive user base without spending too much money. They were probably not too bothered when Microsoft bought a stake in Facebook either.

The success of such an ad placement strategy depends on two factors: (1) whether the host social networks will allow applications to carry ads that don’t earn them any money, and (2) whether Google will provide enough incentives for the developers to include ads alongside their applications. For now, one can only wait and watch how Google will monetise this new channel.