As you read in the previous post, I am setting up a social network focused on Krasnodar Krai using the Wordpress MU and BuddyPress platforms. While setting everything up I started to get a bit frustrated with the fact that this new social network will be another “wall garden” for its members. Why does it have to be so?
Facebook and Google offer ways for users to log-in to other web services using their own usernames fom those two services. While this is fine, it doesn’t go far enough. Why doesn’t Facebook enable a “satellite” social network, like Russian Riviera Today, to offer new members the opportunity to link their new accounts with their Facebook account data. Essentially, a new member would be sent to their facebook account for validation and then “automagically” all their profile information would show-up in their new profile on the “satellite” social network.
Facebook would serve as a kind of “mothership” and whenever a FB member updated or changed profile data in their FB account it would automatically update that same data in the satellite social network.
I have heard that Google is potentially going to offer an OpenID option for its users. What I want to see from this new Google service is what I described above. Let me curate all my personal information within my Google Profile and then have the option of using that data to populate other web services, which I join.
Do you agree that such an option from Facebook or Google would be beneficial?
