Comments on: Google Friend Connect tries to sneak up on Facebook Connect (again)

By: edhardy622

edhardy622 — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:39:51 +0000

British law student sues Abercrombie-Fitch for disability discrimination.
http://www.abercrombieshop.us

By: Jellybean

Jellybean — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:41:12 +0000

it sucks libarys lock facebook wut the fuck harm does it do?

By: wecandobiz

wecandobiz — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:15:34 +0000

It does seem to be the challenge Eric, but but Microsoft owns a web SSO company and already has the details of 475 million people who use Hotmail, MSN, Live Messenger and the like. I have been predicting they will do it for months.
By the way, we have just added a basic 5-minute implementation of Google Friend Connect to our own website to show how it works. Go to http://www.wecando.biz/googlefc.php and leave your comments.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

By: toddsampson

toddsampson — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:18:27 +0000

Hey Eric, thanks for the reply. I completely agree that things are early in the game for Google & Facebook. It will be interesting to see how things play-out.

Thanks for the offer to cover MyBlogLog's future news. I'll be sure to loop you in on our developments going forward. And please feel free to reach-out (todd at mybloglog.com or toddsampson on twitter) if you need anything for your future articles.

By: Eric Eldon

Eric Eldon — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:00:06 +0000

Ian, I somewhat agree. The problem, still, is organizing this central authority and making sure they can function properly.

By: Eric Eldon

Eric Eldon — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:59:12 +0000

william, I understand your argument. The problem is that the sort of cooperative action you're hoping for is extremely hard to organize — and then channel to create a compelling product for users. If it weren't, OpenID et al would have won already.

Pushing the closed-source winners to be more open is perhaps a more efficient course of action.

By: Eric Eldon

Eric Eldon — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:18:49 +0000

Hi Todd, I'm quite interested in how things are going with MyBlogLog. Thanks for the comment. Of course, the other services are just now launching publicly so it's premature to compare traffic between them. That said, please keep me posted on news — I'll cover it (eric at venturebeat dot com).

By: toddsampson

toddsampson — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:01:20 +0000

Interesting post. I may be a bit biased as one of the MyBlogLog founders, but ~500k blogs registered on MyBlogLog is far more traction than either of the other services you mention. Last month's Lijit Widget Statistics shows MyBlogLog as the #4 widget by domain:

http://www.lijit.com/blog/2008/11/06/widget-sta...

And that doesn't count everything MyBlogLog is serving off yahoo.com.

Further, MyBlogLog is far more open than either of the other services you mention. So, as Y!OS ramps up and we can integrate with Yahoo Profiles and APIs, you might want to stay tuned….

By: tony

tony — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:32:53 +0000

whats up sucka

By: Annalise

Annalise — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:32:20 +0000

eZanga’s social network, HopOnThis.com has refreshed the way they distribute content, and added a way to build and maintain relationships along with expanding your online community. They reward registered users with points to use toward cash and prizes just for interacting on the site. Some of the ways to earn points are: updating a blog, inviting a friend, and adding a picture. They also offer features such as page personalization, drag-and-drop features, unlimited space for photos, and much more. HopOnThis offers a productive social experience, while adding to the strength of advertiser’s campaigns.

By: wecandobiz

wecandobiz — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:01:03 +0000

Interesting post William. I support the view that an "open" solution would be better, but nothing ever gets done by committee. While all those supporting OpenId, OpenAuth and OpenSocial have been arguing about how it should look, it has remained a pig to use and Facebook has rushed ahead with a proprietary but significantly easier to use equivalent.

To my mind it makes more sense to agree a standard for how identity and social graph data will be held (user database entries and how the entries relate to each other, simple stuff), publish that to a trusted authority which then acts as the central identity management service against which all sites authenticate users and pick up their social graph for use on that site.

This needs only two standards then: how the user data needs to look on its way to the website (and the central trusted authority can block anything that doesn't comply), and how website passes back new record relationships (new or updated friends).

The news feeds are a minor challenge as RSS can power that easily enough.

Will someone please hurry up!

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

By: wiliam

wiliam — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:42:21 +0000

Hail to the Thieves

So interesting that a short time ago Microsoft (A closed source company) wanted to push forward a standard (Passport) that would have give users the ability to have one log in that worked for many sites. At the time many in the tech and development community saw this as just another Microsoft Land Grab for our Identity and our Content. Many people saw Passport a Microsoft effort to finally gain control of the internet by becoming the standard for digital identity.

Today we have no less than 3 closed source companies in a race to become the "Standard" for holding or Identity and therefore having access to the content that we read and the content that we creates.

All of this at a time when there are many Open Source standards that could be used (Openid is just one that comes to mind) that if properly deployed would do the right thing by putting the user/member in charge of their log in as well as their relationships across many sites.

Have we forgotten the lesson of the not so distance past ?

Why do we not see a problem with the big 3 trying to become the proprietary standard in this very important area ?

Why do developers especially Open Source developers continue to build and extend applications for closed source companies that under mind open source standards and ideals ?

Why do users continue to view giving control of their identity and content to these companies as a win, when in fact the win is clearly on the side of the company that you have allowed to take control of your identity and to generate value and revenue from your content. In return for our compliance we do not even have a right to take our identity and our content where we want.