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News.blog: Facebook allows profile data sharing

No partner Web sites for Facebook Connect have been announced yet, but director of platform Ben Ling explained to CNET.co.uk's sister site News.com that "there's been a lot of partner interest". One partner, however, was displayed in mockups on Facebook's developer blog: social news site Digg.

The technical details also remain unannounced. "We're not announcing the details of the partner integration today," Ling said. "What we're announcing at a high level is that we will have a program that's built into partners large and small, and they will be able to access Facebook Connect."

Facebook kick-started the social-networking developer platform craze when it launched the Facebook Platform a year ago. But on Thursday, bigger rival MySpace made a big move when it opened its own profile content to outside sites -- in a sense the reverse of Facebook's famous decision to welcome external developers onto its own site. Facebook representatives said Friday that there are now more than 350,000 developers from 225 countries developing for the platform, although one prominent programmer said earlier this week that he believes activity may be slowing.

Facebook has also held over 50 'developer garage' events in 10 countries, and Ling said that Facebook Connect will be discussed at future 'garages'.

One Facebook insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said to News.com that the project had been in the works for quite some time, and said the announcement wasn't issued as a response to MySpace's 'Data Availability' project. "We actually think what they are up to is pretty cool."

Representatives from MySpace were not immediately available for comment.

MySpace has partnered with the likes of eBay and Yahoo for Data Availability, which means that many of the Web's biggest names are now warming up to the idea of social-network identity portability. It's likely to be popular with users eager to quell the onset of 'social fatigue' from too many logins and profiles, but privacy and security advocates may raise a red flag -- as might advertisers, to whom Facebook's walled-in user base was ideal for targeted marketing. Spreading that data across the Web could complicate matters on that front.