Interesting week in Social Networking Space

Within the last week or so, the social networking space has changed drastically and a lot like in a game of school yard football, teams have been chosen for the ensuing battle for supremacy in the Social Networking arena.

If I have it right, Microsoft and Facebook are on one side, opting for a closed approach, meaning that participants can't take their data with them to other social networks, and that facebook app developers wouldn't be able to port their apps to other social networks.

On the other side, there's Open Social....A consortium of top social network players, (as well as companies we do not typically associate with Social Networking). Oracle, Salesforce, Linkedin, Friendster, Myspace, Flikster, RockYou, Slide and of course, Google. Through a collection of OpenSocial APIs, social networking apps can be shared across this consortium, enabling a supposed proliferation of web apps for end users.

So based on this, it seems the OpenSocial approach is one that will bring more functionality to end users. And ironically, the Facebook approach ends up seeming very closed, old school and Web 1.0 when it flies in the face of the blatantly wide ope OpenSocial.

The one thing that is not yet clear to me is how this OpenSocial initiative may approach the challeng of unique identifiers for folks in the social fabric. I am Brian Kane on linkedin, Brian Kane on Facebook, Brian Kane on orkut, etc... When do these get linked? Do they get linked? stay tuned...