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Mixi, the giant Japanese social network, announced last week that it is now acting as an OpenID provider. The implementation is particularly sophisticated, Six Apart's David Recordon says they are the first major provider to support the exchange of user profile data via OpenID. The service is also providing a mechanism for users of 3rd party sites to limit access to content elsewhere to visitors who are their friends on Mixi.

All of it begs the question - where's Facebook with OpenID and why do we need the proprietary framework of Facebook Connect when Mixi is doing many of the same things with open standards?

One of my co-presenters at this month's Media 08 event in Sydney was Benjamin Joffe, Managing Director at Asia Internet consultancy +8* and Co-Founder of MobileMonday Beijing. At Media 08 Benjamin discussed the leading social networks in Asia. In particular he compared global leader Facebook with Cyworld, Mixi and QQ. According to Benjamin, Facebook is #4 in that comparison. We thought it would be a good idea to do a Q & A with Benjamin, to find out why. Also we've embedded Benjamin's presentation below (also available here).