Data Portability News & Articles

Microsoft has opened up 5 of their Web Specifications as part of the Open Web Foundation's new legal framework agreement

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• It's all About Location, Location, Location at SXSWi
• Guy Kawasaki Launches Personalized Alltop
• MySpace Enhances Data Portability
• Twitter Search Traffic to Pass Google Blog Search
• Kevin Rose Launches Twitter User Directory WeFollow

The Data Portability Group appears to be trying to regain some renewed community respect by announcing its list of Steering Group Officers. Will it be enough or do we still need to see some real “deliverables” before the respect is regained?

At OSCON yesterday Dave Recordon, of Six Apart, announced a new nonprofit organization. The Open Web Foundation has been created to support the development and protection of non-proprietary specifications for Web technologies.

According to their website, “the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification.”

And we all stood back and applauded heartily as the giant knelt down and handed over the blueprints to his castle…what? you didn’t applaud too?

Yesterday, Microsoft announced the release of Version 1.0 technical documentation for Microsoft Office 2007, SharePoint 2007 and Exchange 2007 as an effort to drive greater interoperability and foster a stronger open relationship with their developer and partner communities. They also posted over 5000 pages of technical documentation on Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint binary file formats on the MSDN site royalty-free basis under Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise (OSP).

This is a good thing isn’t it? It clearly demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to interoperability and data portability.

Not everyone agrees…

It’s a secret how much it cost them exactly, but Comcast officially confirmed it has acquired Plaxo, the social content and address book provider. What are the plans for the Plaxo within giant cable company and how will the lives of Comcast and Plaxo users be enriched?

Just curious, but do you think even though they are competitors, the top guns at MySpace, Facebook and Google spend all their time on Gmail chatting about when and how they’ll release the news of their latest endeavors to move towards data portability?

Or maybe they have spies in each other’s camps sending smoke signals home at night spilling the beans of latest plans to take over your data profile? Flashbacks to Pinky and Brain cartoons spill over into my daytime routine.

In either case, it’s been a busy couple of weeks with Facebook announcing Facebook Connect, then last night Google previewed Friend Connect. Now we read all about MySpace’s “Data Availability” initiative – not to be confused with Data Portability – which allows MySpace members to share their public profile with websites of their choice.

Is this the year of the “User Identity Battle”?

Well, it’s official…the world is going mad…Microsoft will announce it’s intention to join the DataPortability.org.

The Data Portability group is focused on developing a centralized social graph for every user of social networking technologies.

Several weeks ago, right around the “Scoble Affair”, Facebook, Google and Plaxo announced their intention to join the group.

Although it won’t be official for a couple of days, they apparently began talking to the group shortly after the others announced their support.

It certainly makes senses for Microsoft to get involved considering the social networking activities they have (400 million users between Hotmail and Live Messenger). According to Neilsen Online, Microsoft is the second largest social networking provider - ahead of Facebook.

But it’s also interesting to see a big vendor like Microsoft get behind an organization that proposes “non-profit” and “open-source” software. Kind of makes the skin go all crawly thinking about it.

Of course it’s all just rumor now…no one is talking out about it publicly. We’ll keep a watch on these events and keep you posted!

There have been concerns about privacy and safe management of user data since day one of the social networking phenomenon.

Unfortunately, these concerns have been buried underneath the fascination with the exploding popularity of sites like Facebook and MySpace.

There are many projects and initiatives aimed at safe and innovative ways to allow users to take their personal data with them. But consensus was that until one of the larger players in the social networking got involved, these initiatives would be little more than wishful thinking.

It is amazing how quickly consensus can change as Google, Plaxo, and Facebook announced today that they would contribute to the Data Portability Workgroup.

While I am hesitant to say “today could be a very important day in the history of the internet” like Marshall Kirkpatrick did when he broke the story on ReadWriteWeb, I do believe there is much to be excited about.

That is, if you believe that social networking is more than just a passing fad.