Facebook and MySpace have both updated their sites to incorporate capabilities by which users can take their accounts beyond the social networking homepages and onto other sites.
As a part of its redesign, Facebook has created the Facebook Connect attribute, which allows users to take their account information, friends and privacy settings to any third party Web site, desktop application or device. The social networking giant is calling on its more than 400,000 developers to connect their Web sites to Facebook Connect.
The new site design is set up for developers to create an even deeper integration for their applications. Digg, Six Apart, and Citysearch are some of the initial launch partners for Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect will be generally available to users this fall.
In addition to the Facebook Connect application, Facebook has extended its partnership with Microsoft with a new search deal. As part of the deal, Microsoft will work with Facebook to bring its customers Live Search-powered Web search and search ads by the end of 2008.
On MySpace, using its Data Availability capability, users can share their profile data across all of the sites that they visit. The first two implementations of this service, which was announced back in May, began this week, on Flixster and Eventful.
