MySpace Opens User Profile Data to Net

MySpace's new "Data Availability" initiative will enable MySpace users to share profile information with other sites, like Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter.

Social networking giant MySpace has announced a new "Data Availability" initiative that will enable MySpace users to choose to share profile information with other Internet services like Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter. According to MySpace, the idea is to let users be in charge of their own Web identities—and, of course, make MySpace user profiles the central hub for managing those identities. The move marks the first time the traditionally closed-off world of social networking services has opened up its services to share public profile information with other sites.

"The walls around the garden are coming down—the implementation of Data Availability injects a new layer of social activity and creates a more dynamic Internet," said MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, in a statement. "We, alongside our Data Availability launch partners, are pioneering a new way for the global community to integrate their social experiences Web-wide."

Under the Data Availability initiative, users will be abel to choose what information they make available to other services, and who they share it with. Initially, MySpace will let users choose to chare things like basic profile information, MySpace photos, MySpace TV videos, and friend networks. The idea is that instead of repeatedly updating (say) a profile photo for users accounts across a variety of services, users could just update it in one place—their MySpace profile, of course—and have the changes propagated to all enabled partner services.

Implementation of MySpace Data Availability will vary across services; for instance, Yahoo might tap a user’s MySpace photo, music tastes, and interests for their default Yahoo Messenger settings; similarly, Yahoo users might want to connect back to their MySpace data to populate Yahoo’s universal profile. On eBay, MySpace profile information might be used to amplify user’s profiles and help buyers and sellers make more-informed buying decisions. Photobucket users might be able to more easily share images among friends without having to laboriously recreate their MySpace friend network. Twitter might use the Data Availability tools to locate friends and flesh out its notoriously sparse profile information.

MySpace is touting the initiative as an opt-in feature, but the data availability tools raise potential privacy concerns, and may create new ways for scammers and other duplicitous individuals to obscure their identifies and more easily misrepresent themselves online.