In a short period of time, some of the webs biggest player, MySpace, Facebook and Google have announced new tools with the same principle in mind. Independent of one and another they’ve developed features which enable their users to be social outside todays platforms. Tools and widget which opens up the information and make it possible to spread and use the social features on other sites. A bit of affiliate philosophy, people don’t want to be locked inside one platform for be social, rather like MSN Messenger we want to be social along side everything else we do online.
This new development seems like a step in the right direction. Social networks come and go, we people act as we’ve always done. We go to one part of the land and consume everything there, then we move to the next leaving only the leftovers. The social networks now have tools for us users to leave the platform, but still be social through them elsewhere.
Another interesting point about this news, how the social sites now “somewhat” open up for others to develop there product for them. One of the factors which contributed to Facebooks success, the possibility for small developers to create Facebook Applications, instead of Facebook them self. I wonder when,how and who will develop a platform which enables users to access all of their social networks through one site. Instead of forcing us to visit many sites for, to have one site that aggregate information from all the social networks. The big sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn probably wouldn’t like that, but if we think of it through a user perspective it would be great!
Googles new social webtool, Google Friend Connect strive to make it easy for every web site, big and small, private or corporate to have social element or features:
We’ve heard from many site owners that even though their sites aren’t social networks, they’d still like them to be social. – Offical Google Webmaster Central Blog
The web is a social and communicative medium, and their are many of us use it for that purpose. And sometime the web need a big push by the bigger players online for change to start, and this feels like a push in the right direction. Information and communication is and always should be free and accessible.