Mark Zuckerberg discussed the evolution of the social network through Connect and, presumably, similar services such as Google Friend Connect and MySpace Data Availability.The goal of all these initiatives is to make the Web more open and social. Check out Zuckerberg’s response:

“Social applications are going to start [to] decentralize a bit more. Instead of just having a few big social networks like we’ve had over the last five or six years that are basically just these large communities that have a few applications that they’ve built themselves inside, what we’re going to see is that they are going to split up into more, different types of social applications. “

Without a doubt social advertising and network portability will be a certainity of the web in the near future. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top. From a personal standpoint the social networking sites most appealing to me have adopted the OpenSocial platform. Facebook does have the Monolithic Microsoft on their side, but unfortunately I am not sure if that is help or hinderance nowadays.

 Dan Hall

Seattle’s Social Human Resources Manager