Social network fatigue. If you’re reading this, you might already have it.
Ask yourself, “How many social networks do I belong to?” Do you have a Facebook account? Digg? Twitter? Last.fm? Flickr? Are you tired of having to log in, create your profiles and rebuild your friends list on each one of them?
Then have no fear; Social graphing and OpenSocial are here.
The idea behind the new Google technologies are that all users should be able to share their information (pictures, friends, profile data) throughout all of their networks. OpenSocial will allow networks to sync with one another, and share content across previously closed lines. Think of it as RSS for profiles.
Take FriendFeed as an example. Upon adding me as a friend on FriendFeed, you’ll be able to see my recent activity on my blog, my Twitter, my Digg, and so on and so forth.
A major focus of this conference is in the cooperation of all developers in this movement. The actually technology is far above my head (something about an hCard?), but the speakers are making it seem fairly simple and there are lots of heads nodding in the audience.
It’s undeniable that this technology will shape the future of the web. It will impact how nearly everyone operates on their current social networks and will change the way people interact with one another.From a WOM perspective, social graphing technology is a Godsend. Think of it this way. I’m active on nearly 10-15 social networks, but my friends may not be aware that I participate on any others. Through the technology, they’ll be able to see my status updates and profile edits on all networks at all times. It exponentially increases the consumption and distribution of content, and ensures that people spend even more time interacting with one another online.
I love this conference.
Me and Matt Mullenweg (WordPress)
