Gettin' religion

Marc Canter is excellent at tracking what's going on with social networking and everything around it, not disinterested in the space, not afraid to say what he thinks - and speaking at WidgetWebExpo. If you're confused, or want a quick primer, or want to get confused - read the entire piece below.

The Religion of Bringing Social to Software

Profiles, social graphs and user’s content is starting to get encapsulated and plopped into external web sites, blogs and other social networks. The user’s data stays locked up in the originating site, but varying levels of integration, access and ‘inviting’ IS being enabled. This plopping is happening in different ways. Some via widgets, some via full gadget and app integration and everything in-between. APIs are now being offered to access social graphs, permissions and privacy is being maintained and the definition of lock-in and openness is being re-invented as we speak. In most cases user’s will be empowered to access their list of friends from the originating site and “invite’ their friends into the destination sites or services. That’s a good thing. Most probably that ‘invitation’ will get sent via the private messages system of the originating site, not via SMTP and free, open email. In all cases the user’s data stays locked-up on the originating site and what we’re seeing is every ingenious mechanism, technique and route around these four platforms can figure out - to KEEP that user’s data locked-in. That’s my summary of what’s going on. We still have a fight to fight.