• GigaOm , Tuesday, March 4, 2008 11:30 AM

Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li has some interesting advice for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saying that she would open up the Web site's prized social graph--and not just the applications. Li says such a move would preempt the Web portals, which are undoubtedly on the same path to providing more interoperable applications based on the user's social graph. The problem for portals like AOL and Yahoo is that most of their social information comes from email, and contains far less data than a big social network like Facebook.

"Instead of using [the portals'] social map," Li says Facebook should "enable you to import your social map into Facebook, and then take it anywhere else you want. ... That will keep all those early adopters and pioneers from going someplace else to do that aggregation."

Li believes that consumers want data portability. The sooner they get it, the sooner we'll move to a ubiquitous social network of the future "which centers around your email as the constant of the social graph." That, Li said, is still a good five years or so away.

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