AIM Pages, Blogger, Connexion, Dodgeball, flickr, 43 Things, Friendster, Hyves, Jake, lala, Last.fm, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Orkut, Piczo, tagworld, Tribe, WAYN, Yahoo! 360°, YouTube… How the hell does one manage so many social networks with ease? Right now, you can’t. Yet.
From “Social-Networking Sites Open Up” on BusinessWeek online:
Now, several social networks are about to open up. Facebook—aimed at college students and a pioneer in opening up its APIs—will move its developer program out of beta testing. The company won’t say exactly when it will make its software generally available, but says it will be soon. Rivals such as News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace.com, LinkedIn, Friendster, and Google’s (GOOG) orkut are expected to follow suit and open their code to third-party developers this year as well—promising to kick off a spurt of innovation in social networking. “Part of what’s exciting about a developer community is you don’t know what people are going to do,” says Lucian Beebe, director of product management at LinkedIn, which is considering opening up its software. “It offers you the ability to harness innovation.”
And, yes, I’m just as surprised as you that I don’t have a Facebook profile.