All Things Digital

Google calls its latest data portability effort Friend Connect, but a better name might have been AdWords Connect. Because, like most Google (GOOG) initiatives, that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? Connecting people to ads? And there’s a lot more opportunity for that when the Web itself becomes a social network. Which is exactly the sort of thing you hope for when those unobtrusive little contextual ads you sell are as ubiquitous as street signs on the Web.

Designed to help Web publishers easily add social-networking features to their sites, Friend Connect requires just a snippet of code to bring social features to a site along with a means of coordinating them with other social networks like Facebook, Plaxo and Google’s Orkut. It’s another in a recent string of data-portability efforts that hope to apply the distributed model to social networking and put an end to its so-called “walled gardens.”

“The distributed model has worked well for the Web,” David Glazer, Google director of engineering, told Outside the Lines’ Dan Farber. “That is what the Web does–many points of light loosely coupled and massively distributed, allowing users to connect to pages of information. Now it is working to connect people to other people.”

And all of them to Google AdWords, of course. More Internet usage. More ad revenue.

This morning, Peter Chernin, the chief operating officer of News Corp. (NWS) (which owns Dow Jones and this site), acknowledged that Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, will fall short of its goal of generating $1 billion in revenue for fiscal 2008. A surprising shortfall for a division that operates the strongest social-networking offering on the Web.

But not to worry, MySpace has a solution for that. It’s just one that lacks an obvious monetization strategy. It’s called Data Availability and it’s a way for MySpace members to share and sync profile data across partner sites–starting with Yahoo (YHOO), eBay (EBAY), Twitter and Photobucket. “The walls around the garden are coming down–the implementation of Data Availability injects a new layer of social activity and creates a more dynamic Internet,” enthused Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace, in a statement. “We, alongside our Data Availability launch partners, are pioneering a new way for the global community to integrate their social experiences Web-wide.”

That’s all well and good. But how about pioneering a new way to, you know, make money off that integration? Data portability is wonderfull and all. But so is revenue. And right now, MySpace’s Data Availability initiative doesn’t include any advertising deals.

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.”