Zoomshare Profiles Update
Expanding on the Friends Lists feature we recently rolled out Profiles in which users can provide and share interest, contact information and friends list within the zoomshare community. This week we updated Profiles to allow for sharing of the information externally, as a page within one’s zoomshare site.
Nothing too fancy I agree, online services going way back have allow users in one form or another to create and share identities and avatars. There’s even a little bit of history surrounding the concept and terms.
The twist in today’s computing world is that of social networks and sharing. In the social networking scene, MySpace or Facebook for example, your avatar is your one and only web page within that community. In other communities your network is how you share your content and interest, Zoomshare, YouTube or Flickr for example.
But how does one manage, connect or disconnect different profiles and networks between different communities? This is where Widgets come into play. In Facebook for example on can use a Facebook app to share Flickr photos within Facebook.
In a past blog posts I’ve mention how this can work to one’s advantage, a user can choose to use the community/web service/toolset(s) of their preference, without any roadblocks to sharing or managing their identifies and networks.
But all online communities are not created equal and the APIs that web developers use to connect and interact with different systems don’t always play nice. Zoomshare Widgets, for example, don’t work on MySpace.
Its an interesting coincidence that this week’s Zoomshare Profiles updates and continued evolution comes at the same time as Google’s expected announcement of the OpenSocial API.
There are a number of different blog postings about the possible effects this new API will have on the web in general, and services such as Facebook or even Zoomshare. While I won’t venture a guess just yet as to where we or OpenSocial will go. I think its an interesting concept that we all should keep an eye on, developers and users alike.
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