BusinessWeek dared (gasp) to throw out a Web 1.0 term, portal. The Web 2.0 term is called social network.

Before continuing, I’ll attempt to explain the difference between portal and social network.

A portal is an entryway. It is the place where you begin when using the internet. For example, many people use Yahoo as a portal. It is set as your home page, your e-mail and so on.

A social network is a human connector. It is the place you go to find and connect with other people. You are literally socially networking with other humans.

Portals and social networks at present don’t exactly play nice with each other. And by “play nice” I mean that they don’t interconnect with each other. Nowhere does Yahoo connect with MySpace or Google with Facebook and vice versa. Each one of those entities is distinctively separate.

In social networking, separation is bad. Really bad. In order to stay alive and competitive they’re going to have to start sharing some of their data to allow interconnections with portal sites.

And that’s exactly what they are doing.

Partnerships programs have already been established by the big social network players (i.e. MySpace and Facebook.)

The issue is how much data will be shared out from the social networking giants?

Let’s say that you’re able to connect up your Yahoo account with MySpace. Sounds great, right? Consider: What if you were only able to get to some of your MySpace account data (whereas you would still have to go over to myspace.com to get everything done you want to do)? Would it even be worth the hassle?

Situations like this could occur and frustrate people.

And that’s exactly what the social networking giants don’t want to happen.

Some wave the “let’s be completely open” banner loudly and proudly. Others see the value in keeping things separated.

No matter how you slice it, the blunt honest truth of the matter is that social networking needs portals more than portals need social networking.

To the social networks: Don’t be stingy – you’re not that important. You guys talk about being “open” quite a bit, so.. open up. Or go away.

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