Shouldn't DP related work be at W3C or OASIS and not some home grown standards org? I'n not against the work they are trying to do, I just think trying to reinvent another standards body is counter-productive. I saw this with Intalio and BPMI.org years ago and it took forever to move forward until they took it to a more formal standards body. I'm all for getting this done quickly, but I think they need to elevate this effort to a formal standards body. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
In more than 140 characters: Something big is happening. 2008 will, indeed, be the year of "data portability" and of the opening up of the "Social Web." In fact, the inevitability of the evolution from "walled garden" to open Social Web is now so apparent, that players large and small find it increasingly vital to wrap themselves in the flag of "open." Now, it's up to the community of the Web to keep the bar high, and call bullshit whenever we see it. Open means open, and "data availability" is not a goal that anyone has bought into; data portability is what we demand. MySpace's Data Availability is just "data on a leash." If users own their data and content, as they should, that means that should be able to take it with them, wherever they go, without having a revocable tether to the source, as MySpace is proposing. It's time to get behind open standards, like OpenID, Oauth, and microformats. Lock-in is a dead model. - John McCrea
Brian: the W3C has been clueless since the 1990s. Did they do OPML? No. Did they do RSS? No. Did they OpenID? No. Just what have they done that matters since 2000? - Robert Scoble
Yeah. I know Robert. I'm a former W3C AC rep and I know how slow they move. I was on a lot of the early XML, SOAP, WSDL working groups. Painful to see politics get in the way of progress. OASIS moved a bit faster, but never really had the clout. I guess I'm wondering what our options are in this day and age to provide a venue to get this stuff done quickly. I want friend portability yesterday, and I'm not sure who can get that done the quickest. What do you think? - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Don't get me wrong. I am not at all negative at the moment, despite having a bit of constructive criticism here and there for some of the announcements. The much bigger reality is that "it" is happening. The big players are changing their fundamental strategies, shfting from lock-in to "open". It's going to be fun to watch, and great to experience as users. - John McCrea
Open standards have some tough questions which are only semi-technical. (1) How do we handle people wanting different data in LinkedIn vs. Facebook? e.g. work e-mail in LinkedIn, personal e-mail in Facebook (2) Who actually owns a tag on a picture in Facebook? Who owns the wall post - the owner or the recipient, especially of a chain-post. (3) Who owns "scraped" data (ala ZoomInfo), and who has the rights to correct the data? I had to e-mail Spock to change some old data CONTROLLED by a defunct e-mail - Mitchell Tsai
I think we go with who brought us to the prom, and that's the data portability project. AKA Chris Saad and friends. If that fails, then we go somewhere else. But so far these companies are at least engaging on the problem. - Robert Scoble
I saw that Facebook entered the DA fray a while back, but is far as I know, I am still unable to find the emails of my friends, so that I can add them to my Google contacts. - Colby Olson
Data portability on social networks opens up OS issues (1) replication - e.g. loops, time-stamps with different clocks (2) failure-recovery & sabotage-recovery modes and decisions (3) control & authentication (4) telling apart "updates" versus "deliberate changes" - the desire to have different information in 2 places - versioning & forking (5) security, when the weakest link fails - Mitchell Tsai
agree - dataportability is where it is at. Brian if you think you have something constructive to contribute, join the conversation at dataportability.org , all are welcome, especially people who know how badly w3 et al have failed before. :) - David Petar Novakovic
Then to the prom we go! Onward I say. I want all of my friends to hear this regardless of whether they are on Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, MySpace, Jaiku. LinkedIn, UStream, Del.icio.us, etc. Let's just get it done. Data Portability, Data Availability, whatever. I don't care what it's called, I just want it, and I want it now. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Putting my head to the pillow, but eager to re-engage tomorrow. This is, indeed, a really important subject/mission. I can tell you from my meetings with the big players in recent days that there is a sea-change underway. "Open" is the new black, and we're all in for a treat. - John McCrea
David - Just signed up. Happy to participate & contribute to the conversation. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
@Brian - Amen - we all want integration and seamless perfection of our SocNets with OpenID, please! - Susan Beebe
@Brian My god... the first common sense thing I've heard regarding DP. - Cyndy
@chep2m asked me about details of why I was worried about data portability, so I wrote a technical note & linked to some articles/discussions at http://friendfeed.com/e/8455ae.... Way too many issues on my mind...touched on just a view. (Search the computer science literature on "replication" and "security".) - Mitchell Tsai
