In Omaha Nebraska, Attorney General Jon Bruning is proposing a few legislative changes to increase public safety, and this includes cracking down on the presence of sex offenders using online social networking sites, according to MSN. Bruning wants them banned from sites like MySpace and Facebook all together, making their use of such social networks a crime.
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Just last month Brazil-based Power.com launched a social networking aggregator that brought together your activity from across Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, and Hi5, to name a few. But just weeks after revealing its putlic beta, Power.com is being sued by none other than Facebook itself.

As a social networking aggregator Power.com doesn’t appear to be doing anything wrong, but the way in which it’s accessing Facebook user data is non-compliant with Facebook’s terms. According to The New York Times, Facebook has spent over a month in discussions with Power.com to try to reach an agreement in regards to accessing user data, but no agreement could be reached. As a result, Facebook has filed a complaint against Power.com in Unied Sates Disctrict Court in San Jose, California, for copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act, among other charges.
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We’ve seen so many social networks launch in the past four years, it makes even my head spin. But one key differentiating factor between many of the peripheral social networks and the major players like Facebook is the actual ability to network. Socially.

The benefits of social networking (with a purpose) began to come into focus when MySpace musicians found they could connect with each other and audiences on a professional level. And when it comes to social networking for the rest of the professionals out there, LinkedIn is the place to go. Even though Facebook hasn’t always had the best format for direct networking with the purpose of finding a job, it’s still very useful for this objective. So now that millions of people across the U.S. are in need of a job, no thanks to our current economic crisis, many are turning to Facebook and LinkedIn for recommendations and job leads.
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When Google and Facebook launched their social identity platforms over a week ago, few people realized the changed that occurred. It’s not surprising that few took note. Over a week later, there are less than 100 sites that have publicly integrated with Facebook Connect. Compare that to the more than 150 applications that were being launched daily immediately after the Facebook platform launched last year.
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When Google launched their Friend Connect service publicly last week, they one-upped Facebook by providing publishers with an easy to install widget on their site for instantly creating a community. While the features weren’t robust, it made it so that anybody could instantly implement the service on their site. In contrast, Facebook rolled out their service with the a few partners, many of which have still yet to go live.
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At Web 2.0 Summit a couple weeks ago, John Battelle asked Mark Zuckerberg about a potential acquisition of Twitter. Zuckerberg essentially avoided the question and Caroline McCarthy, suggested such a notion was ludicrous. This morning, Kara Swisher revealed that acquisitions discussions were actually taking place but eventually ended in failure.
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Yesterday Nick mentioned on All Facebook that Facebook has modified ad formats throughout the social network yet again, now displaying three ads, up from two per page.  This was just the latest in a string of changes made to Facebook ad display options, which has also included video ads on the homepage. But who’s keeping track? comScore is trying.

According to Red Herring, comScore is under-counting ad traffic on Facebook because of the constant modifications made to the ad formats. For instance, counting display ads and not content-laden marketing ploys could mean that a portion of advertising methods aren’t being efficiently included in reports reflecting Facebook’s potential to deliver ads to users.
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The battle for the social web has been playing out over the past few months but much of it has been invisible to those that are less technical. Today, Google announced that they will begin providing limited access to an API for an OpenID identity provider. This means Google users will be able to login to sites that support OpenID with their Google accounts.

This is a significant announcement for Google and for the open web. While I could attempt to place some sort of arbitrary divider between the open web and the social web, for discussion purposes, the social web is working to make the internet more open. As such both are substantially integrated and can be used interchangeably.

How Does Google OpenID Compete With Facebook?

The battle over single sign on is a significant one. If you haven’t been following OpenID and the single sign on trend over the past couple years, here’s a brief summary: users are finding it hard to remember the logins for every site they register for. As such, companies are racing to provide services that make it easy for users to login with their regular email address.

Facebook is preparing to launch their Connect service to the masses, making it possible for users to register for a site by using their Facebook account and without disclosing any personally identifiable information.
The Pros
There are some clear benefits from using Facebook Connect. For one, websites get access to a user’s news feed and the ability to virally distribute content and user activities through that feed. Second, companies get the “benefit” of placing a Facebook login button on their site. Why is this beneficial? Well, Facebook is rapidly becoming one of the most recognized brands on the web.

The Cons
For any company, using Facebook Connect doesn’t solve all your problems. The primary downside of using Facebook Connect is that you don’t get access to personally identifiable information of that user. I want to have access to a user’s email address so I can contact them in the future. Unfortunately Facebook prevents that. If you want to read more on this check out my article from July about Facebook Connect as OpenID without email.

There Can Only Be One Login

So I really haven’t answered my last question which was: how does Google OpenID compete with Facebook? Well it’s in an abstract sort of way. When you go to register for a site, you are only going to register with one account. Soon enough, you will be able to select from a number of sites that you specify as the center of your identity. As pictured in the image to the left, this is how a theoretical registration form would look.

No longer will you have to enter all your information into fields, instead, that information will come from your identity provider. OpenID is supposed to tie your identity back to a URL but Google has implemented their own version in typical Google style. The point being here is not to debate Google’s implementation of OpenID though, instead to illustrate that your identity can be tied to external accounts.

We’re In it For the Long Haul

In November of last year, I wrote that the email would become the center of social networks. One year later we are seeing this happen as Google and Yahoo! implement new services for the open web. Yesterday Yahoo! announced their open platform which includes a single sign on-like feature and today Google has announced their own version of OpenID support.

This is just the beginning though and ultimately, much of this will require user adoption. I’m guessing that there will soon be a registration “widget” similar to the way that Disqus handles my comments, another party will handle my registrations. As long has I get to have my own database filled with user data, that’s all that matters.

It’s going to take some time but I’d imagine in the next 12 months there will be a huge shift toward a centralized registration system that everybody can use and developers can quickly implement. It’s exciting to see the big players getting involved and while each step can be criticized for its imperfect implementation, I’d assert that this is once again a big step in the right direction.

A few months back, Yahoo! announced that it would be opening up the site’s services to developers in a significant way. This afternoon the company rolled out a big iteration which has a massive social component. The service has a bunch of features that developers can use to detect any individual web user’s “social presence”. So what are the new component of this open platform and what does it mean for developers?

What’s Being Offered?

First, let’s take a look at what exactly Yahoo! is offering as part of the Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS) 1.0 platform launch:

• Yahoo! Social Platform - “The Yahoo! Social Platform (YSP) consists of a suite of REST-based social APIs from Yahoo! including: Profiles, Connections, Updates, Contacts and Status.” Sound familiar? It should. The service enables users to develop a new form of social application similar to Facebook applications or MySpace applications. From a technical standpoint the applications are much more similar to MySpace applications because they take advantage of OAuth and REST. They’ve also announced a PHP SDK that developers can use to start programming today.
• Yahoo! Query Language (YQL) - Remember FQL? If you don’t, it’s the language that developers can use to send SQL-like queries to Facebook instead of making standard API calls to retrieve user information. Yahoo! is releasing a very similar service but they are calling it the “command line version of Pipes.” Whatever they are calling it, this sounds to me a lot like FQL.
• Yahoo! Application Platform - Wait didn’t we just go over the Social Platform? Yes we did! The main purpose of the Application Platform in contrast to the Social Platform is that it provides a centralized distribution point for applications to Yahoo! users. Back in September I wrote that platforms are the new software distributors and this further supports my assertion. Applications will have canvas pages, landing pages, invitations, notifications, a chrome, updates, and a few other features.

Yahoo! Social Platform is an “Open” Facebook Connect Competitor

Facebook Connect appears to have the best odds of succeeding so far as they have had the most partners roll out sites for any company that we’ve seen so far. Honestly at this point much of the “success” will be determined by a PR battle since none of the technology has been rolled out except for Yahoo! which has now released what appears to be a terrific platform.

It’s clear that many of the features of the Yahoo! Social and Application platforms take cues from Facebook aside from the user interface which for now appears to be completely non-existent outside of the Yahoo! chrome. Just the other day I posted about John McCrea’s lessons from attending the User Experience Summit, which was make things look good (as well as a few other key components ;)).

Yahoo! has a solid chance at boosting their developers to the forefront with critical integration points which could in the future include a link to applications directly on the Yahoo! homepage, something any developer would die for. With so much potential, social application developers are now going to be pushed to their limits.

One additional interesting factoid about Yahoo’s new platforms is that they will be leveraging OAuth and OpenSocial, each open standards for the social web. At this point, Facebook is standing alone and while they still have substantial leverage, if Yahoo! can pull all the right strings, Facebook may be forced to comply. As the Facebook platform becomes more limiting, and social application developers are stretched thin, they are rapidly searching new opportunities for growth.

The Yahoo! platforms could very well be that next place they are looking for.

What Does This Mean for Businesses?

Your in the midst of planning the social media strategy for your company and you just learned about Yahoo!’s new Open Strategy platform. While you may not understand everything that it offers, it sounds a lot like Facebook Connect and now you are forced to take this into consideration when suggesting something to the boss. Or perhaps you are the boss but being an intelligent individual that takes all options into account, you are now considering Yahoo! as a distribution channel for your brand.

Well, the reality is that all of the things need to be taken into consideration. I wish I could say it’s more easy than that. The primary factors driving this decision should be:

• How large is your company? - If you are a large company, you should be able to come up with the funding to have a Facebook application, iPhone application, Android Application, MySpace application, Yahoo! application, and any other large platform application. Small businesses obviously can’t do that and that’s why they need to consider other factors.
• Who’s your target market? - In the U.S., the majority of Facebook users are still 18-25. That demographic begins to skew somewhat when you start looking at the other platforms. Considering the demographic biases of each platform is important.
• Ease of development - It’s easier to develop a Facebook application than an iPhone application. If you happen to have iPhone developers on staff though, it’s obviously a better decision to build on that platform. For those without resources, it’s clear that easier platforms will make it possible to make an application for less money.
• Other Options - Sometimes you may not have the budget at all and instead it would be best to figure out how to leverage the social features of these platforms at minimal cost. One option would be to integrate social features into your company’s website. For those with less resources it may be useful to examine all the other options out there.

It’s clear that the trend is toward an open web and any company standing in the way of that is not likely to survive in the long-run. Whatever your company decides to do, Yahoo! has just made your decisions just a little more complex.

Yahoo! Application Canvas Screenshot

Yahoo! Application Invite Screenshot

As an internet entrepreneur one of the most significant fears you can have is that Google will begin offering a competing product or service for free. Both small and large companies fear the day Google will launch a competing free product. Just ask Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer his thoughts on Google Docs, I’m sure he won’t be enthusiastic about it.

If you are an executive at a mobile social network compny, any new service rolled out by Facebook and MySpace would most likely have the same effect. There is a large group of competing social networks that have built sizable audiences including Mocospace, MyGamma, Peperonity, Itsmy, and a few others. The biggest challenge facing those networks? I would suggest Facebook and MySpace are the largest challenges.

According to a study released yesterday, out of all users of mobile social networks “nearly 70% have visited MySpace and another 67% had visited Facebook. No other social networking site reached 15% adoption mobile adoption.” This is substantial and it appears that Facebook and MySpace are simply blowing by the competition in a short period of time.

According to the research, the most popular activities on mobile devices is checking messages and comments followed by posting status updates. This also goes to show how Facebook and MySpace are rapidly substituting many of the features provided by Twitter, a company which has yet to find a sufficient business model.

One of the core takeaways from the study is that mobile social networks, and not email, are becoming the central hub for communication for those connecting on mobile devices. This has huge implications for the future of social networks as it suggests that the social networks are becoming a more integral component of users’ every day communication.

I for one receive business communications via Facebook on a regular basis. While the average users may not have hit that point, the trend is in that direction. The only remaining question is not whether users will continue to adopt social networks on their mobile devices, but what social networks they will use over the next 12 to 24 months.

I would suggest that we will continue to see a shift that significantly favors Facebook and MySpace. Given that the data in this study is from the second quarter, new data will most likely suggest a continuation of this shift. Do you think competing mobile social networks have a chance? If so, where are the largest opportunities?