Using Amazon’s acquisition of Shelfari as a jumping-off point, Tim O’Reilly stresses the need for social network interoperability. From Radar:
Some of my friends prefer LibraryThing. Others may prefer Shelfari. But I only network with those on Goodreads because that’s the service I ended up using first. What a shame that I can’t see what my friends on LibraryThing and Shelfari might be reading! I’d love to see a firm commitment to cross-application connectivity, with the social network as infrastructure rather than application.