Riding the Storm
Excellent post on what openness means on the various social networks
Over on Marc Canter’s blog. As Marc explains, data portability is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case ... varies considerably depending on which social network you are talking about. You can read his excellent analysis here:
http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2008/05/the-religion-of-bringing-social-to-software
If the entry gives you a headache - as it does me - imagine how hard it is to develop widgets that tightly integrate into the social graph at each and every social network and you get some idea of the complexity we deal with daily here at MuseStorm. OpenSocial - is starting to force definition of social graph APIs - but the standard is still too new and too loose. Even as the standard get mature and tightens up experience tells us that each social network will continue to advance and enhance its functionality ... making integration an ongoing challenge.