Last night MySpace announced that they would be renaming their Data Availability service to MySpace ID in addition to supporting Google’s Friend Connect. The announcement comes as both Google and Facebook roll out their single sign in services which attempt to help sites by giving them an easy way to integrate communities and with Facebook have access to user feeds.
Aside from announcing that the service has been renamed, there is really little new with this announcement. The company has decided to support Friend Connect, most likely because the Data Availability service has little support. Even Twitter has announced that they would be supporting Facebook Connect before what’s now called MySpace ID.
The battle for user identities and their social graphs is on but the current leaders appear to be Facebook and Google who now has the support of MySpace. For developers, supporting the multiple services now available will prove to be challenging. Facebook for instance has not seen the type of developer enthusiasm seen when they first announced the general Facebook platform.
Right now all this press is most likely confusing consumers more than anything else. While Google has attracted numerous blogs to install their Friend Connect widget, Facebook got a large New York Times article last week which helped build the buzz. Ultimately it will be months before we can determine how successful the service has become but it’s clear MySpace doesn’t want to be discounted as a potential competitor.
We’ll have to wait and see what the statistics end up showing a few weeks and months from now.
Add New Comment
Viewing 1 Comment
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
There is already an Open standard for identity on the internet.
OpenID allows users to control their online identity without have any vendor lock on.
OpenID works and allows for user control. We do not need any other vendor driven proprietary online identity solutions. In this area it seems that if the solution starts with the name of a company you can be fairly certain it is proprietary and is a one sided relationship that is tilted to the vendor
The Myspace and Facebook ID initiatives are a slap in the face to the Open Principals of the internet.
Any developer and proponent of a truly Open web must take an active roll in pushing for the success of OpenID.
In my view this is an area where one cannot be on the side lines, we have to take an active roll in making sure that members identities and their data are owned by members and not companies that want to lock in with proprietary solutions.
So interesting that a short time ago Microsoft (A closed source company) wanted to push forward a standard (Passport) that would have give users the ability to have one log in that worked for many sites. At the time many in the tech and development community saw this as just another Microsoft Land Grab for our Identity and our Content. Many people saw Passport as a Microsoft effort to finally gain control of the internet by becoming the standard for digital identity.
Today we have no less than 3 closed source companies in a race to become the "Standard" for holding or Identity and therefore having access to the content that we read and the content that we creates.
All of this at a time when there are many Open Source standards that could be used (Openid is just one that comes to mind) that if properly deployed would do the right thing by putting the user/member in charge of their log in as well as their relationships across many sites.
Have we forgotten the lesson of the not so distance past ?
Why do we not see a problem with the big 3 trying to become the proprietary standard in this very important area ?
Why do developers especially Open Source developers continue to build and extend applications for closed source companies that under mind open source standards and ideals ?
Why do users continue to view giving control of their identity and content to these companies as a win, when in fact the win is clearly on the side of the company that you have allowed to take control of your identity and to generate value and revenue from your content. In return for our compliance we do not even have a right to take our identity and our content where we want.
Add New Comment
Trackbacks