“We dream of a world where all social networks are connected and work together.” So say the developers and designers behind the OneSocialWeb project, an initiative of Vodafone Group Research and Development. To cynics, this dream might sound somewhat idealistic and ethereal – OneSocialWeb isn’t the first project to pursue this vision and it probably won’t be the last. But, backed by one of the world’s largest telecoms companies, OneSocialWeb could turn out to be an important step towards making social networking services as interoperable as email, text-messaging and voice calls. OneSocialWeb plans to release a prototype service and an Android app this summer.

While in the UK it sometimes seems like everyone is on Facebook, the global social networking market is much more fragmented. Vodafone estimates there are approaching 200 sizeable social networks worldwide. In many markets, Facebook and Twitter play second fiddle to better-established local players. Moreover, as social networking can involve the exchange of sensitive personal information and photographs, people can be very fussy about the service they use, so, even in those countries where Facebook is the clear market leader, there is demand for alternatives.

Why Vodafone?

Vodafone’s involvement in OneSocialWeb reflects the growing importance of social networking to the mobile industry and vice-versa. Consumers updating their status, writing comments, playing social games and posting photos must now account for a significant chunk of mobile data traffic and mobile operators have a vested interest in nurturing this market.

Reinhard Kreft, Vodafone’s head of standards, industry alliances and academia, says that rather than just talking about the importance of interoperability and openness “we want to show what is possible. That this is not only a dream.” Although Vodafone’s telecoms heritage means its has considerable expertise in interoperability, Kreft stresses that open social networking should come about through a broad and collaborative cross-industry effort, rather than as the result of a Vodafone-led initiative. In essence, OneSocialWeb is designed to be a proof-of-concept to demonstrate to the wider communications sector what can be done.

Kreft believes the major social networks would benefit from full interoperability with other networks because that would give them greater network effects and greater usage, just as cross-network interoperability has propelled the success of text messaging. As and when their growth slows, Facebook and Twitter are likely to become increasingly receptive to that message.

Whereas interoperability is an article of faith in the telecoms world, some leading web-based communications services, such as Facebook and Skype, have been able to create their own internal network effects without connecting fully with competing services. Although email is fully interoperable, instant messaging, VOIP and social networking tend to have only partial interoperability, typically limited by which application programming interfaces (APIs) are available and in what form.

Open, interoperable and very precise

OneSocialWeb’s goal is to get social networks to use a common language, so that it becomes straightforward for an update, link or photo posted on one social network to be viewed by someone on another social network. OneSocialWeb is using a modified and extended version of XMPP technology – the engine behind instant messaging.

Addressing widely-held concerns about the impact of social networks on privacy, the OneSocialWeb team also wants to tune that engine very carefully, enhancing XMPP to give end-users precise control on who can see, or do what, on an activity-by-activity basis and on a field-by-field basis for profiles. Kreft points out that this approach would enable social networks to implement privacy safeguards in a consistent way that consumers would become familiar with and trust.

European telecoms companies have always been particularly sensitive to privacy issues, but this approach is also gaining support in Silicon Valley. Having been accused of cavalier actions in the past, Google seems to have realised the importance of giving people much more control over who sees what. In a comprehensive 216-slide presentation posted on thenoisychannel.com, Paul Adams, user research lead for social at Google, discusses in-depth how people compartmentalize their lives and don’t typically want to mix different groups of friends or contacts. “People don’t have one big group of friends,” he says. “People tend to have between 4 and 6 different groups each of which tends to have between 2 and 10 different people.”

Adams argues that social networks need to ensure that people can keep these groups entirely separate if they want to. Under pressure from users and politicans, Facebook seems to be moving in a similar direction, but it is not clear if and when the social networking gorilla will also embrace the fully open and interoperable dream articulated by OneSocialWeb. A spokesman for Facebook wasn’t available to comment for this post.

Despite Facebook’s extraordinary success, one size probably won’t fit all and the global gorilla will face robust competition in many markets, particularly as social networks become more location-aware and privacy becomes an even hotter issue. Eventually, the social networking market will mature and growth will slow, likely prompting the major players to seek greater scale through greater interoperability. In the northern hemisphere, that time can’t be too far away.