• GigaOm, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 12:16 PM

"Open" may be the latest Silicon Valley buzzword, but it's definition actually belies how it's being used in practice, said GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham. MySpace, Facebook and now, Google, have all made attempts to "open" their social networks to third party programmers by making user data portable, but Higginbotham said that calling standards like OpenID, Oauth and OpenSocial "open" is a misnomer, because they're actually very restrictive.

For example, the Google Friend Connect program through OpenSocial requires software makers to put a certain code in their programs to access applications built in OpenSocial, which expects to have 12-24 sites while in preview mode over the next several months. Users can then share activities with their contacts on participating sites without having to duplicate anything.

However, Google's open initiative is even less open than MySpace's, because the use of IFrame to deliver data means that site owners can only deliver data; they have no way to alter or work with it. MySpace, however, allows the data to be used outside of its site, but it still stores all the information on its own servers. As Higginbotham said: "None of these services are entirely open yet ... and may never be, given security and data abuse problems..." but "the trend toward a more social web is clear." Everyone wants that to happen, but it will not until the user is "able to reach across walled gardens and gain granular control as to what he or she shares and with whom."

Read the whole story at GigaOm »