San Francisco — Hardly a day has passed as the social networking Facebook Inc. following its rival MySpace’s lead is relaxing its grip on millions of personal profiles by allowing members of its popular Internet hangout to transfer their personal information and applications to other Web sites with a similar concept, called “Facebook Connect.”
Facebook, which has about 70 million users worldwide, on Friday said it will employ a system that allows its users to copy pictures, personal information and other customized applications established on its site to other websites without extra effort.
With the changes announced, Facebook joins a rising group to make it easier for people to share their favorite pictures, information and applications with family and friends anywhere on the Internet.
“Facebook Connect is the next development process of Facebook Platform that allows users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site,” senior platform manager Dave Morin wrote in a Friday blog post. “This will now enable third party Web sites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook.”
“The service will be publicly available in the next few weeks,” he said.
Contrary to MySpace, which has about 200 million users worldwide, Palo Alto-based Facebook plans to allow users to take their personal profiles to any Web site that wants to host them. To begin with, MySpace is opening user profiles only to a select group of sites, including leading destinations owned by Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc.
While privacy is an alarming issue as it always is with social networks. But users’ privacy settings on Facebook will also remain in effect on external websites.
“We believe the next evolution of data portability is about much more than data,” wrote Morin on the social networking site’s developer blog. “It is about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings.”
Sure enough die hard social network fans accept that they have given up quite a bit of privacy just by being online. We just want certain rights protected and to know that we have control over how and where the information is shared.
Facebook stated that features planned for the forthcoming service include being able to authenticate and connect a Facebook user’s account to an outside Web site. The user, however, would have control of the permissions granted.
Other characteristics include users being able to bring their real identities with them wherever they go on the Web. The information would include basic profiles, profile pictures, names, friend lists, and photos, as well as information on events and groups.
Furthermore, as Facebook users move around the Web they may possibly take their privacy settings with them. Changes to those settings on Facebook would be automatically distributed to any third-party Web site that was granted access to the information.
Last month, Facebook partnered with other social sites to collect external data into Facebook’s “mini-feeds,” showing user activity from the likes of Flickr and Yelp on Facebook profile pages.
No partner Web sites for Facebook Connect have been announced yet, but director of platform Ben Ling quoted as saying that “there has been a lot of partner interest.” One partner, however, was displayed in mockups on Facebook’s developer blog: social news site Digg.
The technical details also remain unannounced. “We are not announcing the details of the partner integration today,” Ling said. “What we are announcing at a high level is that we will have a program that is built into partners large and small, and they will be able to access Facebook Connect.”
It is a giant move for the site. So far, Facebook was famous for holding its cards close to its chest — even banning the account of popular blogger Robert Scoble when he used a script to export his Facebook contact list to Plaxo. But Facebook has a representative in the Data Portability Workgroup, and executives have said that Facebook has wanted to bring its information outside the site eventually.
However, the portability of personal profiles also may possibly facilitate other top Web sites, like Yahoo, that have struggled to create their own social networks. Yahoo is hoping to drum up more advertising by featuring more social applications from outside sources. Yahoo is under intense pressure to boost its profits after its board refused last weekend to sell to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion.
If releasing the personal data at its site turns Facebook into a dominating authority for shaping and steering social interactions across the Web — then that could make Facebook even more powerful than it already was becoming.