Anyone with a MySpace profile will now be able to share their profile information with participating websites, including Twitter, Photobucket, eBay and Yahoo.

The move effectively saves surfers the time and hassle of completing repetitive profiles, while letting them share favourite movies and music, photographs, friends lists and a host of other information at the click of a button.

MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe said the initiative puts surfers in control of their data and web identity.

MySpace has christened the move the "data availability" project, but as outlined in Issue 185 of Web User it is the start of a wider trend within the internet industry to embrace the semantic web.

The semantic web involves a much richer understanding of the mass of data placed online, but the technology has been slow to catch on.

Ivan Herman, a semantic web expert at W3C (the WorldWide Web Consortium) told Web User "Once your personal data has been entered, it is stored in millions of documents and in databases on the web."

Previously there was no way of linking this data, but the semantic web is able to retrieve and collate it. This means that it can now input your personal information should you join another social network.

MySpace users will still maintain complete control over what information they share and who gets to see it, but it will make sharing information across different platforms easier and quicker.

Yahoo announced earlier this year its plans to utilise the semantic web with a more efficient tagging system to give better search results.

MySpace's DeWolfe said he hoped other networking sites, including Facebook, would sign up to the agreement.

About 117 million people use MySpace, according to the site. It is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and the changes will be introduced within the next few weeks.

www.myspace.com

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