MMO Hub has another great article up today about the need for having Social Networking Interoperability integration into MMO's. In other words the ability to transfer the social part of MMO's (Friends list, etc) from one game to another.

This has happened to me more than once:

Racing home, you become overwhelmed by a depressing realization. In last weeks' guild meeting (held in the chat client Ventrilo), other members expressed interest in playing "The New MMO." Being the fancy pants social networking guru guild master that you are, you once again assumed the leadership role and said you'd add everyone to your friends list and create a guild.

But MMOs don't, and it looks like that's how it will remain for awhile. Oh, sure, IBM and Linden Labs announced they managed to transfer a "Second Life" character from the virtual world's Preview Grid to "an OpenSim virtual world" (which was using a "Second Life" protocol client), but neither company announced if data such as friends lists were maintained in the transfer.

Still, Linden Labs has the right idea. In the Q&A section of the announcement, the company wrote: "Linden Lab sees interoperability as essential for virtual worlds to reach their full potential. In addition, interoperability will enhance Resident experience and the new architecture will improve scalability and stability." I couldn't agree with them more.