More on the big three announcements … Facebook’s Connect, Google’s Friend Connect and MySpace’s Data Availability. In short, it is all about data control and extending their ‘social influence’ to other web sites to capture more and more data for the social graph … and no doubt to bolster the value of their underlying revenue streams.

Each of the services proposes keeping their member’s data on their servers – no shock there. Their version of ‘open’ is via the use of widgets, applications or iFrames – however, they all have the same strategy – extend the reach and control more data.

The early pitches from the big three (going back to Facebook's announcements in 2006) were based on the ‘Social Cloud’ and integration via simple REST APIs. The tune has changed now to integration via widgets, applications or iFrames under a “let-me-do/outsource-it-for-you” approach … we’ll just make it easy for you to inter-operate with our data using standards such as OpenID, OAuth, etc.

If you buy this approach, then you accept the fact that it is OK for Facebook, MySpace, Google, et. al. to control more of your data …

Refer YouTube video clip below explaining Google Friend Connect BETA ... Does anyone notice any permsissions associated with sharing and connecting 'friend' data to the third party web site? Seems like you need to opt-in to join the guacamole recipe website - and you can send invites to friends ... but the permissions on adding friends and sharing friend data?

A week after the “big” announcements about commitment to being open, seems like not everyone in the sand box wants to play nice. The issue? Facebook has taken their bucket and spade and decided to Opt-Out of Google’s Friend Connect.

TechCrunch’s Steve Gillmor has put together the must read article on the issue entitled “Facebook’s Glass Jaw”…

Facebook’s rationale is that Friend Connect “redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.” Give me a break. Can anyone say Beacon?

Err, let me understand this … It’s OK if Facebook does this with exactly the same API with Facebook applications to enable their users to share data with sites and applications they choose … however, as Gillmor states “…somehow Friend Connect does its dirty work without users’ knowledge”.

Comscore Logic ≠ Google Revenue Growth …

restated as … Comscore ≈ Σ(measured clicks)+/- {insert margin of error, PR spin}

Blogosphere … Google 1; Comscore 0

Comscore is in the business of measurement of clicks. Google is in the business of monetization of clicks. The big disconnect over the past 24 hours was that Comscore had effectively convinced the market that Google search was down – predicting that digital advertising revenues were ‘off’ … and well, err, seems they were wrong.

Here is Comscore’s analysis and position …

Comscore Blog - "Why Google's surprising paid click data are less surprising" by Magid Abraham (James Lamberti, SVP of Search and Media at comScore, is a co-author of the post) on February 29. 2008

The industry had well covered Comscore’s position – refer:

Refer video below on The Google Privacy Channel. In short, it demonstrates the issues that Google and the Internet community are struggling with ... notice how many times Peter Fleischer (Google's Global Privacy Council) goes out his way to explain new advancements in the first half of the video and how they apply only to "unauthenticated search" ... meaning, if you logged in to GMail of any of the other Google products, this doesn't apply ...