Topic: Data portability

FTC Playing Antitrust Poker With Google And Looking For A Way To Save Face

Last week there was a report that “four out of five FTC commissioners” favored going forward with an antitrust case against Google. The Reuters article in which the claim appeared mentions but doesn’t emphasize the litany of “vertical search” complaints against Google raised by competitors. Those “Google favors its own results” claims have been at […]

A Proposal For Social Network Détente

For the past two weeks, I feel like I’ve been witnessing some type of Cuban Missile Crisis going on between Google, Twitter and Facebook. I’d like to suggest some ways that social-nuclear war might be averted. Beyond Blame, Believing In Cooperation Let’s set aside blame, because blame isn’t going to move anything forward. Let’s also […]

SEO

Could Bing Improve Its Search Results With Google +1?

Here’s a big dose of irony. Could Google +1 buttons or +1 data — which Google uses to improve its search results — come to rival Bing? Potentially. Bing +1, Anyone? The issue came up yesterday during Q&A following the keynote talk by Bing’s director Stefan Weitz at our SMX Sydney conference. An audience member […]

Facebook Drops Gmail As Find Friends Option

TechCrunch reports Facebook has removed the Gmail option of finding friends on Facebook. If you go to the find friends section on Facebook, you will find options to find your friends via Skype, AIM, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast, MSN, sbcglobal and verizon.net, but you won’t see Google’s Gmail as an option: This doesn’t […]

Google & Facebook: If You’re So Smart, Work It Out!

Last week, things boiled over between Google and Facebook over data sharing. This week, the CEOs from both companies took the stage at Web 2.0 Summit. Despite the obvious conflict, neither CEO would just clearly say what they wanted from the other. It’s a pity two innovative, groundbreaking companies can’t show any innovation when it […]

Facebook Messages: Export Of Facebook.com Addresses OK

How well can the new Facebook Messages interact with other email services? Pretty much not at all, Facebook told me. You can export some addresses, and you can forward email into Facebook, but that’s about it. I spoke with Facebook’s director of engineering Andrew Bosworth after today’s Facebook press conference about the new Facebook Messaging […]

Will Facebook Lose Google’s Contacts Integration?

TechCrunch reports Google has made a small but significant change to their Google Contacts API terms of service that technically prevents Facebook from using it to improve their friends database. When users sign up to Facebook, they are prompted to add friends. They can do so manually or by uploading their contacts or email lists. […]

Facebook Introduces Private Groups, Allows Export Of Personal Data

In a bid to give users more tools and control over the sharing of information (and perhaps preempt Google) Facebook introduced a new way to create and communicate with small private groups of people. Through an API this same functionality will be extended to publishers and third party developers like Facebook Connect is today. The […]

Google Friend Connect Introduces Social Widgets For Site Owners

Contrary to some earlier reports, Google’s new Friend Connect, launching today, is not focused on data portability or a direct answer to MySpace “Data Availability” or the new Facebook Connect. While there’s a data portability dimension, it’s focused on the flip side of the equation: site owners who want to make their sites more “social.” […]

OpenID Gaining Critical Mass, Yahoo Announces Support

OpenID is a single sign-in infrastructure that potentially alleviates the need to create new passwords and user names for every new site one joins or visits. There’s been lots of discussion about OpenID and who’s in, who’s almost in, and so on. Today, Yahoo formally joined (and fully legitimized) the effort. Microsoft Passport was originally […]