The race to find a single sign-on and synchronization service has been on since social networking sites hit global acceptance several years ago. Today, after working under the radar for the past year, and with a member base of 5 million users, Power.com announced its global launch with a mighty claim: “Our platform will break down the boundaries between social sites and allow users to synchronize their logins, content, messages and friends.”
Calling it a ‘social inter-networking’ service, CEO Steve Vachani today explained: “Social is about people, not about place; we’re making ‘where’ irrelevant.”
Here at ReadWriteWeb, we have written extensively about the various efforts taking place to transform the Internet from the predominantly closed system it is today, to a more open and social experience; one where authentication is once only and data can be ported across sites. While we are certainly interested in any company that claims to have the answer, like everything else, time will tell.
What is Power?
Power is an interoperable platform that allows social network users to synchronize their profiles, content, messages and friends across various social sites. Right now, it works with Facebook, Hi5, MSN, MySpace and Orkut. LinkedIn is scheduled to appear before the end of the year, and Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Skype as well as others should be part of Power’s grid within the first few months of 2009.
According to Vachani, what Power is not trying to do is create one place online for people to send and receive updates, “we want people to continue using the sites they are currently using,” said Vachani.
Additionally, Vachani explains that Power doesn’t need the big websites to get together and agree to any commitment as the platform does not depend on their participation: “This independence contrasts with all previous efforts to bring social networks together, including Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, Microsoft Passport, OpenID and OpenSocial,” Vachani said.
How does Power work?
Once you register your social networks, Power shows you all the content from your registered sites; friends, IMs, e-mails, photos, data. Your home page will have three Power modules; your profile, your messages and your friends list. The technology is dynamic, so once you’re logged in everything is served to you in real time.
If you want to reply to any of your messages, you can do it from within Power, in what Vachani calls ‘Power Communicator’ and send it to Facebook, MSN, SMS, MySpace, Gmail – all of them if you wish, or you can do it via your ‘Power Friends’ list:
“Profile Syncing” allows you to change your profile within Power, and gives you the option of updating it across all of the social networks Power supports.
How Power got 5 million registered users so quickly
According to Power, messaging is a prime driver of its user base. Users communicate with their friends across sites, via email and IM using Power Messaging to send millions of inter-networked messages every day and each message has a link back to Power.
Additionally, Power users have added Power widgets, links, and watermarks to their social network profile pages, so when friends visit, they click to learn more.
Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Power.com is a privately held company with 70 people. This month, Power.com is opening new offices in San Francisco, California and Hyderabad, India. The company received an $8 million Series A investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and investors including Esther Dyson. The company expects to have over 30 million registered users by the end of 2009.
