MySpace Embraces DataPortability, Partners With Yahoo, Ebay And Twitter
Michael Arrington
127 comments »
MySpace is announcing a broad ranging embrace of data portability standards today, along with data sharing partnerships with Yahoo, Ebay, Twitter and their own Photobucket subsidiary. The new project is being called MySpace “Data Availability” and is an example, MySpace says, of their dedication to playing nice with the rest of the Internet.
A mockup of how the data sharing will look in action with Twitter is shown above. MySpace is essentially making key user data, including (1) Publicly available basic profile information, (2) MySpace photos, (3) MySpaceTV videos, and (4) friend networks, available to partners via their (previousy internal) RESTful API, along with user authentication via OAuth.
The key goal is to allow users to maintain key personal data at sites like MySpace and not have it be locked up in an island. Previously users could turn much of this data into widgets and add them to third party sites. But that doesn’t bridge the gap between independent, autonomous websites, MySpace says. Every site remains an island.
But with Data Availability, partners will be able to access MySpace user data, combine it with their own, and present it on their sites outside of the normal widget framework. Friends lists can be syncronized, for example. Or Twitter may use the data to recommend other Twitter users who are your MySpace friends.
The data sharing is dynamic, meaning it is updated constantly. And that also means user permission is not a one time thing. At any time a user can change or revoke the rights of a third party to access the data. Those third parties are “being held to strict terms of service,” says MySpace, which prohibits them from storing the data or using it once permissions are revoked.
For now, just the four launch partners will have access to Data Availability, and the features should go live in the next couple of weeks. More partners will be added over time, and MySpace says they eventually want to give even “mom and pop” websites ways to be involved.
What About Open Social?
MySpace is a partner in Google’s OpenSocial project, but this is being done outside of that framework. MySpace says they’ll adopt the Open Social APIs that evolve around data sharing once they are developed and announced.
The Center Of All User Data
Historically MySpace has lagged Facebook in terms of innovation. But they definitely “get it” this time. Sharing user data so openly (with user permission) is a terrific way to incentivize users to store all their core data at MySpace to begin with. Users eventually need one place on the Internet to store their data, or lots of places to store different types of data. But what they don’t want is today’s world where they are recreating and storing the same data over a plethora of social networks just because all those sites refuse to share. We’re starting to see the floodgates open and the idea of data sharing become a reality (thanks largely to the efforts of DataPortability and other activists in this space).
By acting first, MySpace takes the lead and has a shot at being the long term winner - meaning lots of people use MySpace as the place to store data, and share it out to other applications from there. Look for Google to make their move next.
See my post on “The Centralized Me” for more of my thinking on this.
Not to get into the “anything you can do, I can do better” argument. But, this is possible with Facebook’s RSS feeds, and platform. I just worked on a project where you can login to a 3rd party site with your Facebook credentials, and a user account is created on the 3rd party site with your Facebook information. It even imports your status message from Facebook.
So Myspace didn’t act first…
This is a really cool idea. I have long forgotten MySpace for Facebook and this is a way for MySpace to creep back in.
So this means I know have to actually use and setup my MySpace page. Oh joy! Another place for me to store my “stuff” (even if it is portable to outside platforms now).
In all seriousness, it’s a good move, but it’s difficult to get excited about this since MySpace is such a pain (and design nightmare) to deal with.
I agree with Ryan that much of that functionality is already available over at FB. I’ve never used MySpace, but I’m sure those that do will appreciate this added functionality. It makes sense to be able to have one place on the web where you can consolidate all of your online activity.
Absolutely a big + for MySpace. Being there as part of the trends.
Any of these partner sites could easily create a Facebook application that their users can use to import their Facebook info.
Very cool. I am talking about this in my live show today (It’s at 3pm ET on http://pop17.com if you want to chat live with me about it). I have to give MySpace props for this one. They are the first! This will make me use them more. Now YouTube needs to do it because that’s where I spend most of my time.
Ahh, the new “fanboy war”: Facebook vs. Myspace.
Who cares y’all? Do what you like, and shutup about it.
For the record, having some proprietary method for achieving “Data Portability” and using standards based on convention are very different (OAuth). What MySpace has done is worthy of praise and it is a straightforward framework. Not some work-around that Ryan describes.
@Tamera, Ever thought that it is those people you choose to friend that dictate what the design looks like?
Ummm… do twitter users actually use MySpace? Me thinks not.
Looks like Twitter and Facebook are the new Favs around here
Cool, the way to go!
Unfortunately, MySpace is terrible to navigate, has inferior 3rd-party apps, and virtually no legs to stand on with FaceBook’s latest chat integration establishing them as the one-stop-social-shop.
good idea …if they’re not too late, that is. i think a lot of people have long since left their myspace profiles for dead in favo(u)r of facebook. it’ll be interesting to see if having one’s data available elsewhere creates enough incremental value to make stale myspace profiles relevant again.
too little, too late
Too late? People have abandoned MySpace? You guys have tunnel vision. MySpace still has more unique users logging in and more minute spent on the site every month. Face the facts.
http://featuresblogs.chicagotr.....yspac.html
We are finding it much easier to market to facebook users than myspace users. better targeting options… Tried MySpace in the past with minimal success.
Do myspace users use twitter?
I think this a good move in the right direction. Ir could be win/win/win for all participating parties.
I would imagine not too many people on myspace are currently on twitter (but they could come racing over if myspace promotes this properly). I hope twitter is ready for such an influx of new users and dramatic increase on their network.
Twitter needs to be careful about allowing too many changes to occur on thier site. They sure as heck don’t want to take on the feel of myspace.
While myspace beats facebook to the punch with this there are currently ways that you can use your facebook credentials and share some of your data outside of facebook. As an example you can login to a 3rd party site with your Facebook credentials, and a user account is created on the 3rd party site with your Facebook information. Look at 83degrees as an example.
Cheers,
Rodney Rumford
Excellent! Exciting developments indeed. It just might convince me not to dump myspace too!
I’ve just signed up for myspace because of this, having never used it before. Seems a lot like geocities in design, maybe it gets better as you use it.
Not as nice looking as Facebook, and seems like little effort has been put into the design…
Interesting to see what this means for the user though.
@Dan London, they don’t so much. That’s why it’s important for twitter to be in on this. It could bring a lot of attention to twitter. We think twitter is big because our social graph is on it, but twitter is small and dominated by tech people.
What are the formats? What data? Hello.
We get it, TC readers prefer Facebook and Mac OS X.
But since Hitwise just noted +73% of US social networking is done on Myspace, we know where normal people prefer.
@Rodney, Thanks for repeating Ryan Merket’s (#1) comment. Yes, Facebook has a one-off, proprietart method to achieve something similar.
P.S. I think the article was about Myspace, Twitter, Ebay, and Yahoo, not Facebook. Not that any of you care.
This is great news. All the more to talk about at the 2nd Data Sharing Summit http://www.datasharingsummit.com a week from now.
All these developments build on the work of the identity commuinity ( in its current form founded in 2004) and with the 6th Internet Identity Workshop Monday - wednesday http://iiw.idcommons.net - it was at our first event oct 2005 that openID v2 developments really got going. Identity commons has 15+ action groups in this area that have included participation from google, msft, yahoo, ibm, sun, oracle, ca, novell, aol, plaxo etc, for years http://wiki.idcommons.net
Attributing the success of all that is happening with open. Standards for identity and datasharing to a 6 month old effort doesnt really capture the depth of long term work that has gone into making this possible.
“Don’t call it a comeback”
Mike , you guys run out of shit to write about??? All articles about Myspace or Facebook.. sure, ok , fine man we get it …. now write about something new interesting please, i know you can..
@Frank Church — yes, it is about Myspace — my comment was just saying that Myspace was NOT first in this dept — despite what the article might say.
Last time I checked, RSS and JSON were not “proprietart methods”.
@Ryan, You are correct, RSS and JSON are standards-based data formats, but their use to allow 3rd party site access represents a proprietary, one-off method, as opposed to OAuth.
Nice catch on the typo, sorry to confuse you.
@Frank - True, Myspace is using OAuth — but not for everybody. Myspace has only opened to select partners (Photobucket, Twitter, Ebay, and Yahoo) — while Facebook is open to ANYONE who can fill out a form and receive an application key. Which is becoming more and more standard way of opening data to 3rd party sites/developers.
… the Facebook platform is also constructed with REST, nothing proprietary about that.
If you can fill out a form, download a zip of the library files, copy/paste an application, and know SQL (I hope if you claim to be a developer), then you can do the same thing in Facebook.
Point made — moving on.
Some comments
Great photo and bookmarks opportunity but without coupling it with a new sign in method such as OpenID I dont really see how they are going to lure people back or gain new users
simply by adding OpenID many people would return to try it out and find that myspace has changed a LOT it would really excite many people in combination with Open Social… myspace auth would become so much easier and more useful that more people might do it more often…
regards
John Jones
http://www.johnjones.me.uk
Haha… my boss bought Myspace for Dummies (the ebooks version) thinking it would help with promoting our small business. Makes me wonder why people even bother buying vaguely technological books…
It’s seriously about time. I’m getting so tired of duplicating my information at every website I want to be part of.
Despite all of its efforts to convince us that Myspace is more than just a meat-market for people looking to “be discovered”, I can’t seem to justify using it. The interface has become the “pimp my social life” of the web. Although facebook is teetering close to this edge, it still has a much more clean design. I think myspace has the most to gain from this new announcement.
@Frank Church fer sure, but I’m talking about my *personal* data, not clients. I’m not a FB fan by any means, too many privacy issues.
I’m a “host it your damn self and then share it” kinda girl.
What part of “portability” do you all not understand here?
“Portable” as in “able to move from one place to another” I can see my house from my neighbors backyard but I can not move my house to my neighbors backyard. Hence the difference between “portable” and “visible”
To get back to the technology, portable is a way to keep yourself from being locked into Myspace while visible is a way for Myspace to increase its lock in over you.
I’m not saying it’s a bad move by MySpace, it isn’t. It’s a great move by Myspace because their locking their customers into MySpace. But Data Portability this is not…
Availability, yes. Portability, no. This is lets other sites make use of my data that is maintained at MySpace. True portability means I can take my data off of MySpace altogether, and plop it onto another site with ease. To take advantage of this new feature, I still need to stay with MySpace.
Not sure why I’d want to share data with Yahoo or Ebay, but Twitter makes sense.
@Tom @ Michael I don’t agree with those statements. Portability, as in how we are looking at it, is that it’s portability in context as well as actually moving it. Several of us have long promoted the view that where the actual data resides is irrelevant; it’s having access to that data from other places is what’s key. Think of data like cash you store at a bank, and by electronic funds you can access that data anywhere on the web, to get the value you want. You don’t need your life savings in your pockets to use it, do you?
(I’m not an armchair commentator putting my two cents in - I’m a co-founder of DataPortability along with Ben Metcalfe, who consults for Myspace and has been a key agent to support DP within Myspace.)
It is kind of funny that you have to give your data to a company so that it can be shared with other companies. I think we are going about this the wrong way. At a high level I think that the user should have control of their content at all times, and that companies should ask the user for this information. I dont think that there should be a middle man for a users data.
@Sara
‘Haha… my boss bought Myspace for Dummies (the ebooks version)’
Hey now, I just finished up writing the second edition of this book so don’t be making fun of it TOO much…you’ll hurt my feelings.
However, I am hoping that I can add this info about DP in there even though most ‘average users’ won’t even know what the heck it is (like RSS feeds and the like).
This is definitely putting pressure on FB’s views and firm stance on keeping their data inside of their community. Either way, this will be an interesting thing to watch play out over the next few months.
@William - Agreed.
@ Elias: Yes, but if I’m not happy with my bank’s policy, leadership or some other issue, I can simply withdraw my funds, transfer my accounts to some other provider, and sever all ties. Shouldn’t I have the same control over my personal data, and have the means to easily port everything to a new provider if I wish (especially if, as you say, it doesn’t matter where my data is stored)?
Hello Michael,Good move by myspace but will i be able to add,edit,delete my photos & Videos & friends + send,delete my mails & bulletins etc. ? or just to make visible my info to other social site ?