Two significant news items last week in the social network fray. First, cable giant Comcast bought Plaxo the n°3 social network behind Facebook and MySpace for a reported $100m (euro 64m). Plaxo sports a 40m members base (and a 50 people staff – I kind of like the ratio…) Why is Comcast doing this? According to New York Times tech blog Bits, “Comcast was a natural partner since Plaxo was already providing the Philadelphia-based cable giant with software to help integrate its cable TV, phone and Internet services into a common platform”. The integration is a bet on the inclination of TV series’ fans to congregate. It will be interesting to watch. The second item is the launch of Google Friend Connect. The service is of the typical Google everything-on-it kind. It enables every site to add a social network layer — and, here is the catch, to tap into big social networks such as Facebook or MySpace. As the state of the art now demands, it is a plug-in anyone can easily paste on their site. (To understand how it works, go to the Google video) or to read this description. Predictably, social networks giants are not elated. Three days after the Friend Connect rollout, Facebook decided to ban the new Google service from linking into Facebook. In a detailed statement on its developers site, Facebook is invoking privacy, the butcher touting veggie food. This is just the beginning of the showdown between the two giants.
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