• TechCrunch, Monday, May 12, 2008 11:45 AM

First MySpace, then Facebook, and now Google this morning is expected to announce a new product called "Friend Connect." Friend Connect will be a set of APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party Web sites. The Google announcement trails MySpace's Data Availability, launched last Thursday, and Facebook's Facebook Connect, also launched late last week, which are similar products.

So, like Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google's Friend Connect will be a way for users to securely send personal profile data to third party applications. This allows users to centralize their social experience, so they can broadcast information about themselves to sites that perform different functions without having to make individual updates.

"The reason these companies are rushing to get products out the door is because whoever is a player in this space is likely to control user data over the long run," said TechCrunch. "If users don't have to put profile and friend information into multiple sites, they will gravitate towards one site that they identify with, and then allow other sites to access that data." In other words, the Data Portability stakes are high, very high.

Read the whole story at TechCrunch »