Google, Facebook unite for social network standards

Competitors Google and Facebook look for common ground to allow users to control identity and content online; whither telecom industry?

Putting down their swords for a moment, Google and Facebook (along with universal address book company Plaxo) today joined the DataPortability Workgroup, which is working on best practices for sharing user identity data across social networks.

So-called “data portability” has become a hot-button issue. Individual social networks, such as market leaders like Facebook and MySpace, are understandably reluctant to simply let users take their social data and site content to competitive sites. But some level of portability is necessary for users to make the most of such social networks – and to relieve users of the need to re-enter their data over and over again as well as allow applications and widgets to pull in data from multiple locations into a single mashup.

Joseph Smarr of Plaxo, Brad Fitzpatrick of Google and Benjamin Ling of Facebook will be representing their companies in the group, which doesn’t set standards but is working on a “reference design” document to set best practices for how user data should be shared. The effort builds on existing standards and protocols, such as OpenID, microformats and Attention Profiling Markup Language (APML).

The execs from Plaxo, Google and Facebook are by far the most notable additions to the Data Portability Group, perhaps providing the organization with the star power it needs to generate de facto standards. In particular, this represents the first olive branch between Google and Facebook, which up to now have mostly assembled themselves in opposing “camps.”

Notably missing in all this: any reps from the telecom industry, which has notably adopted “open network” issues in recent months but which has yet to jump into the Web-dominated areas of social networking and user identity/content management.

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