One of the big issues about social networking is the fact that not everyone uses the same product. The results are invites from business contacts on Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn and others. What do you do? Turn down contacts, keep joining yet more social network platforms or try and convert people requesting a contact to use your prefered solution. Or simply ignore the whole issue.

I use Facebook and LinkedIn. Some contacts are shared on both. Some on one and not the other. And some on neither and I just use old style e-mail and phone to keep in touch.

Charlene Li of Forrester Research has news of the Data Portability Workgroup (members include Facebook, Plaxo and Google) who are working to try and agree common data exchange formats. As Charlene says...

'...Google, Plaxo -- and the big surprise -- Facebook, will be participating in discussion on how users can "access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems."

This will be a tough one to agree and implement. It has obvious user benefits but data protection and privacy are two massive issues that need to be addressed.