Marketing Pilgrim

Yesterday MySpace announced that you can use your MySpace profile on other sites. Not to be outdone, today Facebook announced their version. It’s called Facebook Connect and it’s a good sign that data portability is catching on. Especially because Facebook usually doesn’t follow suit when it comes to sharing data (unless it’s for advertising).

Facebook Connect was announced on the company’s developer blog.

Privacy is a big concern as it always is with social networks. Free means you give up personal information so you can be on the site. If you change your mind, getting the information off could be tricky. Also, each site has its own privacy policies.

Of course die hard social network fans accept that they’ve 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.

Through Facebook Connect, you’ll be able to use your pictures, friends, groups, events and other profile information to other sites. Facebook recently banned popular tech blogger Robert Scoble from the site for exporting his contacts in Facebook to another web site (Plaxo).

Facebook: “We believe the next evolution of data portability is about much more than data. It’s 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.”

In a smaller step, Facebook let people put feeds from other sites onto their Facebook profiles. Unlike MySpace, Facebook hasn’t announced exactly what sites they will partner with. They just said they will partner with both large and small sites.

Those are the details so far, no technical specs were given. Facebook Connect will launch in a few weeks.

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