Facebook as an ecology

You can now post a notice on Facebook when you post to Livejournal. This reminded me of the OpenSocial protocol announced this week by Google. The idea behind OpenSocial is to allow various social networking sites to link together in on giant ecosystem. So, a post on LJ or MySpace could be linked into a feed on Facebook or Google Reader. This is really very similar to the original concept of the "Friends Page" on LJ, isn't it? Brad was so far ahead of the rest of the social networking sites when he built this place. One of the things I've always liked about LJ, in contrast to everything else I've seen (including custom web sites) is the built-in aggregator and filtering system that compose the "friends" concept. With groups of friends, you can choose which particular people can read your entries, and which entries you want to see at any given time. It rocks. And now, 8 years later, someone else is trying to copy it. Think Brad got any royalties? :-)