Comments on: Facebook and Microsoft Open Up Contacts

By: Rafael

Rafael — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:25:14 +0000

XFM? Or XFN?

By: Eric P

Eric P — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:20:39 +0000

Should the title of this post include "Facebook"?

By: Angus Logan

Angus Logan — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:35:07 +0000

Kumar : you are talking about Open Social (http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/) not the Google Social Graph API (http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/)

-Angus

By: Angus Logan

Angus Logan — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:32:31 +0000

Hey Stacey - Love the post.

Just a few points on the differences between Google Social API and Live Contacts API.

The Google Social Graph API is for PUBLIC relationships i.e. all the relationships which can be indexed by a search engine;

The Windows Live Contacts API is for your PRIVATE ADDRESS BOOK / CONTACT LIST - I know people and I would never want my relationship with them to be published on the public internet, but I may want to invite them to Facebook /LinkedIn/Hi5/Tagged.

thx

By: Kumar Pandey

Kumar Pandey — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:11:21 +0000

Social Graph API is like servlet api. You need a container implemenation of the api like Orkut , Hi5. Then widgets written using the api can be served from the container like Orkut. The basic idea being the same widget then can be uploaded to other containers implementing the api like Hi5 etc.

So one writes widget that uses the social graph api. Uploads it into container like Orkut. Then any other user in that container who is linked to you can use the widget on that container.

By: Niraj

Niraj — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:49:59 +0000

And actually that distinction just makes it more clear that Microsoft doesn’t have an equivalent to the Social Graph API. It’ll be very interesting to see how Google gets the social graph to interoperate with the contacts API, particularly since there’s plenty of room to improve the contacts list which can often be filled with people you don’t know due to their default preference to add people you converse with:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/12/who-are-my-gmail-contacts.html

By: Stacey Higginbotham

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:15:12 +0000

Niraj, thanks for pointing me to Google's Contacts API, and it does look to have the same security focus that Microsoft is aiming for as well. But I recall that the The Google Social Graph efforts were sold as a way to help import and manage non-Google contacts around the web so think the two Google efforts might be somewhat complimentary. But the Contacts API does look more like and apples-to-apples comparison.

By: Niraj

Niraj — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:38:23 +0000

I think the Social Graph API is a separate piece from the rest of this. Microsoft is making contacts accessible to developers via an API just as Google started doing towards the beginning of this month:
http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2008/03/3-2-1-contact-api-has-landed.html