Webware Radar: MySpaceID gets upgraded, heads to Yahoo
Also: Diggbar is a reality and it's coming soon; The Sunlight Foundation has raised $4 million in grant funds; and Alexa Thumbnails has been discontinued.
MySpace announced Tuesday that MySpaceID, a service that allows any Web site to give users the option to link their MySpace profile with their favorite Web sites, is in limited testing on the Yahoo home page. The MySpace app is just one of several services Yahoo has started testing on its home page, but it will allow Yahoo users to connect to their MySpace network without going to the social network's home page.
MySpaceID also has some new improvements. According to the company, the service will display a member's full profile and stream all his or her activities to any site on the Web. OAuth and OpenID support is now included, as well.
The MySpaceID implementation on Yahoo's home page will include access to friend updates, friend requests, and the option to manage status and mood. MySpaceID is only available to a small percentage of Yahoo users in advance of the public beta. Once out of beta, MySpaceID will be available for every user accessing Yahoo's home page.
More details have emerged on a new offering from social news service Digg. Dubbed Diggbar, the toolbar will expose how many times people have clicked a Digg story, not just how many people Dugg it, according to an interview Wired conducted with Digg founder Kevin Rose. The number of clicks a story gets is not a metric Digg currently shows users. It's not available yet, but the company hopes to roll it out in the coming weeks.
The Sunlight Foundation, a company that uses the Internet to create more government openness, announced Wednesday that it has received a $4 million grant from Omidyar Network. The organization plans to use the funding to "improve access to existing government information, digitize new information, and create new online tools to foster greater government transparency." Along with the funding announcement, it was also announced that Matt Halprin, partner at Omidyar Network, will join Sunlight's Board to engage in strategy and general management.
Amazon Web Services announced Wednesday that it has discontinued Alexa Thumbnails, which allows developers to access thumbnail images from the home pages of Web sites Alexa has indexed. According to the company, all access to the service will end on June 12, 2009, and new subscriptions are not being accepted. Amazon claims it will use the funding it was putting into the Alexa Thumbnail to focus on other services.