MySpace Gets Nerd Cred With OpenID, Data Availability Implementations

(PaidContent.org)  This story was written by Joseph Weisenthal.

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A couple of announcements from MySpace that will mean nothing to 99.999 percent of its userbase the social networking site, owned by News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) FIM, announced its support for the open authentication standard OpenID, along with the first implementations of its Data Availability initiative. On OpenID, the news means that users will be able to sign onto a limited number of third party sites using their MySpace credentials. It doesn't mean, however, that they'll let users log onto MySpace with identifying credentials established elsewhere. It's the same as when Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) announced its support. In addition, the company is partnering with Flixster and Eventful, on its Data Availability initiative. Data Availability was announced in May, as basically its way of letting users port their social networking data elsewhere. Twitter and eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) were original launch partners. Some of this stuff may get developers excited (maybe), but seeing as the whole business of apps on MySpace hasn't taken off the way it quickly did on Facebook, this will all have a pretty limited impact on the company's core users, at least for awhile.

Meanwhile, Facebook holds its developer conference tomorrow, where it will probably unveil a whole host of new initiatives, probably having to do with stuff like interoperability and openness. This looks like a little pre-emptive attempt to blunt some of that buzz. Read more in the release.


By Joseph Weisenthal