All Things Digital

In order to build the necessary respect and win the mindshare of the Internet community, I recommend a recipe not unlike the one we’ve used with our TCP/IP efforts: embrace, extend, then innovate. Phase 1 (Embrace): All participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community–determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems. Phase 2 (Extend): Establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community.”

–J Allard, corporate vice president of design and development for the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division, “Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet,” 1994

In February, Microsoft (MSFT) surprised industry watchers and embraced the idea of data portability, throwing its support behind OpenID, a decentralized digital-identity protocol.

This morning came the inevitable extension of that idea, the announcement of a partnership with five social networks on a new data-portability strategy. LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo (TWX) and Facebook have all agreed to use Mirosoft’s Windows Live Contacts API to, in the words of John Richards, director of Microsoft’s Windows Live Platform, “create a safe, secure two-way street for users to move their relationships between our respective services.”

In other words “Windows Live Messenger.” Certainly, it’s hard not to look at Microsoft’s announcement that way, given the simultaneous debut of invite2messenger.net, a new Microsoft Web site through which people can invite friends from participating social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

“In completing this two-way street, both Windows Live and our partners have paid special attention to relationship context and privacy management in order to create the best possible user experience,” explains Richards. “We understand that just because people have a friend relationship with a contact on one social network, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want that same relationship on another network. To preserve the context of the relationship, we are requiring that relationships be re-established in each experience with permission from the friend or contact, rather than automatically storing the data. We encourage you to visit www.invite2messenger.net to see these ideas in action, and to invite your Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged friends to join you on the world’s largest instant messaging network, Windows Live Messenger.”

Would something added to AOL, or AOL added to something else, make it stronger and more valuable? We can’t rule it out and we wouldn’t. It’s our obligation to make sure AOL gets into whatever configuration that makes it the strongest and most valuable.”

–Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes

Google (GOOG) won’t be acquiring Bebo any time soon. Unless it’s willing to buy Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL first. This morning AOL announced plans to acquire the social-networking site. Price tag: $850 million–cash.

It’s a sizable and unexpected deal for AOL (talk about unlikely buyers …), which has itself been rumored to be an acquisition target. Bebo, which claims a global membership of about 40 million users, will expand AOL’s world-wide reach to some 80 million unique users–many of them in the 13-to-24 demographic. And if AOL is lucky, it will jump-start its sluggish advertising business.

“This is a tremendous acquisition and one I think is game-changing for AOL–it puts us squarely as a leader in social media,” AOL chairman and CEO Randy Falco said during a press conference this morning. “Bebo will be the cornerstone of our strategy to transform the online experience for advertisers, media companies and consumers. Bebo is the best social media asset out there. It’s a true pioneer in the space, has the most engaged audience on the Web and has seen tremendous growth since its founding less than three years ago. When you combine Bebo’s worldwide users with those who use AIM and ICQ, we reach around 80 million. … We will be a social media powerhouse.”

What does this mean for the Microsoft (MSFT)/Yahoo (YHOO)/AOL love triangle?

Facebook threw a well-timed sucker punch at Google’s “Everybody-But-Facebook” OpenSocial initiative this week, extending Facebook Platform–a set of tools that allows developers to build applications for Facebook–to other social-networking sites and platforms.

“[We] want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model,” Facebook senior platform manager Ami Vora said in a blog post announcing the move. “In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms. Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what we’ve learned, everyone wins–users get a better experience around the Web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications. ”

Among the first sites to avail themselves of the Facebook Platform standards was Bebo, an OpenSocial partner. Isn’t that a bit of a slap in the face for Google? Bebo co-founder and CEO Michael Birch says no. When OpenSocial finally launches, Bebo will support it as well. “OpenSocial and the Facebook Platform are clearly different platforms,” Birch told News.com. “Our lazy development team said they couldn’t do both at once.”

Looks like Google’s “Everybody-But-Facebook Coalition” has some new members. News Corp.’s MySpace, Bebo and blogging outfit Six Apart have agreed to join OpenSocial, Google’s much-discussed social play.

Bebo and Six Apart are nice additions, but it’s MySpace that will bring quite a bit more heft to this effort–an addressable market of some 70 million active monthly users, at last report.

Who’ll next join OpenSocial? Will it be Facebook? CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s likely puzzling that question out at this very moment as he waits for an invitation to join–which apparently hasn’t yet been extended. “Despite reports, Facebook has still not been briefed on OpenSocial,” the company said in a statement. “When we have had a chance to understand the technology, Facebook will evaluate participation relative to the benefits to its 50 million users and 100,000 platform developers.”

Note: John Paczkowski is on vacation and won’t be writing or posting videos until he returns Monday.

To keep you abreast of tech news while he’s away, we’re compiling a daily digest of 10 must-read tech stories. We’re calling it the Tech 10 and it appears below.

1. Retailing behemoth Wal-Mart will sell digital-music downloads on its Web site without copy protection, Reuters reports. The so-called digital-rights management software insisted on by some record labels can stymie where the average user plays the songs.
2. Taking on the juggernaut of iTunes, MTV and RealNetworks are forming an online digital music venture called Rhapsody America. According to The Wall Street Journal, Verizon Wireless has signed on as mobile distributor of the joint content.
3. Adobe Systems’ warhorse Flash Player is getting a makeover named “Moviestar.” The update, says InfoWorld’s Paul Krill, will bring high-definition video technology to downloads, affording clearer and smoother playback of images.
4. Increasingly popular online video site Metacafe got a shot in the arm in the form of $30 million in financing. VentureBeat reports that the latest cash infusion was led by new investors Highland Capital Partners and DAG Ventures.
5. Acknowledging it did bad (though not evil), Google announced last night that it would make credit-card refunds, rather than Google Checkout credits, to those owed after the company terminated its download-to-own/rent service of Google Videos. PC Magazine disclosed that the search giant will also allow users an additional six months to watch the videos they have already downloaded.
6. Fretting over security and productivity concerns, half of all companies in a recent survey are blocking employees’ access to Facebook. The poll of 600 workers by online security firm Sophos also found that two-thirds of all employees believe their colleagues are revealing too much information on the social-networking site, exposing them to cybercriminals bent on data theft and their companies to network hackers.
7. Bebo, the U.K.-centric social-networking site, has announced a partnership with Microsoft on a new instant-messaging service. According to Webware, the Windows Live Messenger hookup is only that–and not a signal of any impending acquisition.
8. Joining the social-networking parade, online business network CollectiveX has launched Groupsites. According to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, the new product opens up the buttoned-down service to allow users to create social profiles as well.
9. Upping the ante in the competition for giving laptop users more memory, Toshiba announced today that it will release a 320-gigabyte hard drive for its laptops by the end of the year. According to IDG News Service, for users of multimedia laptops–where storing video is paramount–the extra space will come as a welcome feature.



10. In a bow to color choice and the sexes, researchers have found that there’s truth in the the time-honored (if sexist) adage that girls like pink, boys like blue. Reporting on a study from two scientists at Newcastle University, the Independent did not confirm whether the findings were borne out in colors chosen by men and women for iPod skins.

–posted by Associate Editor John Sullivan