Widgets are the most consumer-friendly means toward data portability. Users who want to establish a “centralized me” - whether that be on a blog, personal website or favorite social network profile - often just need a simple way to highlight their identities as maintained elsewhere on the web.
Webjam’s new profile badge is remarkable in how well it enables users to do this. Unlike other badges, which tend to show only basic information (names, headshots, birthdays, etc), Webjam’s badge streams your most recent activity, lists your networks, and displays your friends.
Compare this widget to the profile badges found on other social networks, such as Facebook:
Ning:
And LinkedIn:
The Facebook and Multiply widgets can be set to point out recently contributed items like photos and posts, but beyond that they’re pretty static representations of one’s presence there.
Surprisingly, MySpace doesn’t even have a profile widget, and it’s an empire built on widgets. The Data Availability initiative appears to be a way to provide widget-like functionality through APIs (see the mockup to the right). Why they’ve decided to skip over embed codes is beyond me.
Other social network sites like Vox, KickApps and Grouply also lack profile badges.
If the smaller social networks (and social networking platforms) are going to compete with the likes of Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect in the long run, they’ll need to beef up their data portability initiatives - and widgets are a good place to start.
Perhaps they could look at the widgets provided by social media sites like Last.fm for inspiration:
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Of course, we here at TechCrunch love widgets. Just see below.
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I’m on it!!
Here goes: http://www.webjam.com/wil
http://www.soulfullvibes.com is on it!
good domain name.
Would be great if WebJam could at least allow users to link RSS feeds from existing blogs or other social networks (much like FriendFeed does) rather than trying to build yet another content silo.
Wil Tan has it right…can someone please explain to me why we’re not seeing tons of widgets that syndicate all the data that sites like FF and SocialThing are aggregating?
Here’s a free idea for someone to do right because I just don’t have the time. Build a timeline widget that uses the FF API as the underlying data source and shows your and your friends’ activities across all social sites on one timeline. Make it look great, feel snappy, and let people grab their own right embed code right from the widget, and you’ll have a winner. And if you, please remember me when you hit the top
Ryan — Does this MyBlogLog widget do some of what you’re looking for?
http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/.....our-b.html
Re: Ryan Waggoner
Because data portability is only now getting the real attention it should have received years ago. Social networks cannot hope to contain their users but simply hold their attention for as long as they can. If you build a great social network (or website in that context) then you should have nothing to worry with data portability. The sites that shake in their boots about their prisons being smashed are the websites that should fall to the wayside.
Expect to see tons of data protability companies spring up in the near future as this is just the start of the trend.