Harry Halpin of the University of Edinburgh observes: Now that the Social Web has finally reached truly widespread adoption, the question remains: Why can't users have their data back? To flip the question, what could application developers and companies create if they had access to the masses of social data currently spread throughout the Web? Luckily, the building-blocks that allow us to open up these closed walls of data exist right now from OpenID to OAuth to FOAF; all that is missing is a strategy for putting it together. As has been said before, you may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you. Or to be more particular, your data. - Ron Capps