WebProNews

Data Portability Workgroup: WPN Takes Inside Look

Since social networks are incredibly popular and since users are generally members of more than one social network, it would be convenient to transfer your data and pictures from one profile to another.

Rumor: Facebook Acquiring Plaxo?

Facebook is “one hundred percent” buying Plaxo, we’ve just heard from a source. Wow, starting your story with that sentence certainly grabs your attention, doesn’t it? VentureBeat’s managed to make a statement of "fact" without actually saying that it has confirmed the story. Nice!

Facebook Joins Data Portability Group

This is pretty big news, it seems to me, after all of the back-and-forth about data being trapped inside Facebook — the social-networking site has joined the Data Portability Group, along with Plaxo and Google, and will now be helping come up with a standard for moving personal data into and out of different networks.

The Data Portability Issue Isn't Going Away

So Robert Scoble has his account suspended by Facebook for using an automated script to harvest his contacts and their email addresses (see my previous post), and all hell breaks loose. Scoble, whose account is later reinstated, is denounced for being a publicity-seeking limelight hog, and for using a script from Plaxo that is an egregious breach of Facebook’s terms of use (since it uses optical character recognition to grab email addresses, which the site keeps as image files).

Terms of Use - What Envelopes are Being Pushed?

Quite a major kerfuffle has developed in the past 24 hours over Facebook booting Robert Scoble out of the social network. Facebook sent him an email that accused him of running an automated script which is in violation of Facebook’s terms of use.

Scoble Was Testing Plaxo Pulse Feature

OK, so I’ve been released from my NDA. I was alpha testing an upcoming feature of Plaxo Pulse — this feature has not yet been released and now that my account has gotten shut down it’s not clear whether it will be released. It is a Facebook importer that works just like any other address book importer. What does it collect? Names and email address and birthday. Why those? Because it’s trying to connect Facebook names with names in its database.

Plaxo Interested In Selling Itself

We're in a quiet time of year - not much happens during the holiday season or for a short period afterwards.  Plaxo is reportedly trying to sell itself, though, and discussions about the company's reputation and its asking price have stirred things up a bit.

Social Networks and the Importance of Trust

2008 will be the year of business networking, says Bernard Lunn, who offers six predictions about some of the social networks that are getting a lot of attention at the moment - Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing and Plaxo.

Plaxo Gives Thanks For OpenSocial

Google’s OpenSocial has been both laughed at and fawned over as people have debated if it has any value.  The discussion will, by and large, continue, but the people at Plaxo have already decided that OpenSocial is extremely good.

Social Media Thanksgiving List

In the spirit of the season - we’ve compiled a few things we are thankful for around here at Ignite.