Last week heralded the launch of two new connectivity services by the two largest social networking sites - which was subsequently followed by a Google announcement of similar proportions. Let's break it down into easily-digestible chunks. Apologies for the link barrage.

MySpace - Data Availability. You can share MySpace photos, TV networks, and friend networks with Yahoo!, eBay, Twitter, and Photobucket.

Facebook - Facebook Connect. You can integrate your Facebook activity with Digg, Twitter, Flickr and Picasa.

Google - Google Friend Connect. You can view, invite, and interact with Facebook, Google Talk, Hi5, Orkut and Plaxo friends.

You'll notice there's a few application overlaps in there. Confused yet?

Owen Thomas of Valleywag raises a valid point amid this self-congratulating, proverbial orgy of connectivity:

But do I really want to interconnect all my online identities? That's the premise of the "data portability" movement — that we really want nothing more than to take our friends with us from one website to another. And yet I'm content to segregate, say, the work acquaintances I have on LinkedIn from the more personal relationships I track on Facebook.

Of course, the user can voluntarily choose to opt in or out of these services at any time.

A "web without islands" is the vision that MySpace is pushing; they've even announced that they're open to working with Facebook.

Hold on. Here's two sites with markedly different audiences: the primarily teenaged userbase of MySpace, and the traditionally university-aged (and beyond) Facebook clientele. Yes, I'm generalising.

It's not a huge stretch to imagine a partnership between the two social networking giants splintering their respective audiences so deeply that a majority of both sites' users jump ship and latch onto the next MySpace, the next Facebook.

You might remember that in November 2007, Facebook launched their Beacon 'service'. It was ostensibly part of Facebook's advertisement system that sends data from external websites to your Facebook friend feed - which resulted in the service automatically sharing online book, movie and gift purchases with everyone you know on Facebook. Understandably, furore erupted, and Beacon became an opt-in-only service.

Interesting times are ahead for the tens of millions of daily users who choose to spend their online time stalking their friends' drunken photos and figuratively grooming their social relationships. It's amusing to think that five years ago, instant messaging programs and email were about the only ways to keep in touch with your friends. Nowadays, it's becoming increasingly difficult to avoid them.