Trent Adams's List: DataPortability Project

• This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community. Today’s announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had. While the OpenID Foundation serves a stewardship role around the community’s intellectual property, the Foundation’s board itself does not make any decisions about the specifications the community is collaboratively building.

• Anyone who has been involved in Open Source software development knows that you have to have a steering group, and there has to be some hierarchy. You can't get a ship moving in any direction with 50 oars in the water each rowing in their own direction. I understand that in order to have buy-in from so many different groups, no one wants to alienate anyone, but the reference made at the meeting (and I'm sorry I forgot who made it) to OpenID was a valid one. They developed the technology, then took it out to various companies and asked for buy-in. In order to "strike while the iron is hot," the luxury of having 100 people all defining things differently and addressing different concerns before there is even a rudimentary roadmap makes the scope of the project much larger than it has to be, and slows down progress.

• In the last couple of weeks there have been a number of very positive steps forward for Data Portability in general and the DataPortability Project specifically.

   

  These include wins by the OpenID Foundation, the IC report, the DataPortability Report and others.
• A couple of trends, though, are causing me a little concern and may require a slight course correction before they spin out of control and fragment, rather than standardize, the ecosystem.
• 1. Tightly coupled OpenID Implementations
• 2. Google’s Social Graph API
• 3. OpenSocial++

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• The world has changed. At least the marketing world. The era of mass marketing and advertisment as we knew it for many years has passed. Of course TV is not dead but it’s more and more superceded by the internet with all it’s channels for niche entertainment and self expression. Banner blindness and shrinking advertisement effectiveness have added their part. And so companies look out for other ways to reach potential and existing customers.
• Add to that the success of the DataPortability Working Group which set policies and technical guidelines in how to create a World Wide Web in which data is more freely flowing around than ever before bringing us closer and closer to seamless networking experience and a semantic web.
• This of course is only a glimpse of what might be necessary tomorrow. And the question is of course how far this tomorrow is away. Several things are of course available already or being worked on. The Google Social Graph API is there, blogging and commenting in Plone is worked on, Multimedia support is available, OpenID is as well (but maybe could be enhanced).
  Creating a social networking layer using e.g. plone.relations and membrane is not too complicated to implement and marking things up with microformats is also no magic.

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• I agree with much of what Nitin is saying here. I see the DataPortability Project story as being a strong part of this picture he’s painting. I understand there are a lot of nuances here between “Data Portability” and his four points, and time will tell what consumers latch onto and how the ball is moved forward.

• I believe the world’s moving quickly to a point where content units will be quantized to the degree where they will easily flow between distribution/syndication channels. Perhaps it’ll be driven by something like what people are calling the Semantic Web, basically allowing content units to be self-describing so they can be assembled by consumers and their agents (eg. sites, applications, feeds, etc.).

   

  The value in the relationship with a customer, then, is centered around servicing them. Regardless of the content they’re seeking, companies will want to develop a solid relationship with their consumers. In this model, the long term value to the consumer could be a function of (DA,DV,DR,DO,DP). The trick will be in determining the weighted relationships between each parameter (per each consumer/provider pair).

   

  FWIW - My bet is that there won’t be a one-size-fits-all equation, but rather a range of acceptable values based on context.

• Having been in the data business since the early 90’s, it’s relatively transparent to me that Data Portability is a non-solution to a non-problem, a storm in a teacup, an emperor with no clothes.
• The real problem – The Elephant In the Room – is whether web app vendors “play fair” with my data when it is IN the web app, not whether they “allow” me to take my data and go play elsewhere. There are two major choices for a web app user here, just as for a dissenter in a social structure – “voice” and “exit”. Data Portability focuses only on “exit” and is not just incomplete but massively disempowering to the user of the web app.
• I’d like to suggest an alternate approach – one that supports strong TOS guarantees from web app vendors with TOS terms that guarantee 4 atomic Data Property Rights which I call “dimensions” due to their orthogonality and fundamental-ness. I posit that given these 4 as TOS guarantees, Data Portability is pretty much a non-issue.
• a) Data Accessability (DA)
• b) Data Visibility (DV)
• c) Data Removal (DR)
• d) Data Ownership (DO)
• I’d rather have strong TOS guarantees of the above 4 dimensions, DA, DV, DR and DO instead of DP.

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• Caring is sharing, people, especially when it comes to your personal data. Leading developers from important social-network sites joining a "data-portability" advocacy group doesn't represent history in the making. It's a marketing campaign to make everyone feel sickly sweet, knowing that these websites are so concerned about our information. Like the Care Bears, by signing on to the DataPortability Working Group, top coders like Brad Fitzpatrick, Dave Recordon, and Ben Ling have joined forces to form a group which we can only call by one name. Presenting: The Share Bears!

• The DataPortability initiative just released their report for the month of January. I love the open approach the group has embraced to share the issues, highlights, and progress with the community.

• The Good:

   

  The work is being broken down into a bunch of action groups to help get the teams organized and break the work into manageable chunks.

• The Bad:

   

  Like many similar efforts, the big vendors agree to participate and make a lot of noise about it, but they haven’t all been doing the real work necessary to make it succeed. With any luck, this open approach will convince some of the vendors that they need to participate and contribute if they want to be part of the initiative.

• The Ugly:

   

  There has been quite a bit of criticism of the DataPortability group about the slogan, naming names, vendor hype, and more. The good part is that the group is responding to the criticism in an open and honest manner and making changes to address the issues.

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• When Facebook joined the DataPortability.org Workgroup a few weeks ago, the press described the move both as a “bombshell” as well as “brilliant PR”. In order to understand what Facebook’s decision to join actually means a little bit better, I spoke with Chris Saad, Co-Founder and Chairperson of DataPortability.org.

• IF: What does it mean for companies like Facebook to “join” DataPortability.org?

   

  CS: It means they agree to engage in the conversation and work towards a blueprint for maximum interoperability between applications.

• IF: Has Facebook promised to implement any particular functionality by any particular time?

   

  CS: Not yet - but once the blueprint is done we can then start asking vendors to implement things. Many other vendors have already moved quickly - in the last few weeks and months lots of vendors have been implementing OpenID, etc - these things are not unrelated.

• IF: Who controls the direction of DataPortability.org?

   

  CS: DataPortability is managed like a wiki - participants step up to the plate and just get things done. Some of the most active participants join the Steering group to help set the direction.

• IF: What do you expect to be achieved within the next 1-2 years?

   

  CS: We will have the blueprint done, and vendors starting to implement it. The size and scope of implementation will depend on continued public and media pressure to get the job done!

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• “Connect. Control. Share. Remix” is the new slogan used by DataPortability Group.
  but it reminds me the Coriander release from Netvibes: (Re)mix the web.

• A few months ago, we announced that we were opening the social graph and invited others to join us. An effort like that encompasses many different technology projects and all kinds of different companies; in just a few months the idea of opening up social networks has received a lot of attention. Today we're excited to share an amazing new plugin for Movable Type that allows you to aggregate, control, and share your actions around the web and we're the first to bring this sort of functionality to free and open source blogging tools.

• It's worth revisiting some of the successes the openness movement has accomplished in just the past few months: 

     
   
  • Google's OpenSocial released new versions of its APIs and we hosted a wildly successful hackathon to help support the creation of new widgets for the standard.
   
  • OpenID 2.0 shipped and both Google and Yahoo! are now supporting OpenID, bringing hundreds of millions of new IDs to the community.
   
  • The group DataPortability.org was formed and released a video reinforcing these themes around openness.
   
  • And finally, we've made good on our promise to let you show off all the services you belong to, with TypePad and Vox automatically letting you list your accounts around the web on your blogs using Microformats to link to your profiles. And as of today, the same ability is available for Movable Type.
• As we explained half a year ago, we're on a mission. Like we said then, blogs change the way we communicate. Just like with TrackBack, OpenID, opening the social graph, and so much else in blogging, we're hoping that we can influence everyone else to follow our lead and move blogging forward with us. Bringing your actions around the web under your control is a fundamental next step to making all of our blogs even more powerful and expressive.

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• It was kind of heartening today - after reading yet another press release about some BigCo joining the DataPortability effort - to stumble upon this roadmap timeline of activities leading to a DataPortabilioty enabled web.  Kind of heartening in a cute naive way.
• So lets please lighten it up on the press releases and claims of support - when its just not clear what the hell these companies are supporting or what they’re doing - at all.

• I’m sure some folks are wondering exactly what this means. Even though I was close to the decision making around this, I believe it is still too early to tell. Personally, I share Marc Canter’s skepticism about Dataportability.org given that so far there’s been a lot of hype but no real meat.
• As far as I can tell, Dataportability.org seems like a good forum for various social software vendors to start talking about how we can get to a world where there is actual interoperability between social software applications. I’d like to see real meat fall out of this effort not fluff. One of the representatives Microsoft has chosen is the dev lead from the product team I am on (Inder Sethi) which implies we want technical discussion of protocols and technologies not just feel good jive. We’ll also be sending a product planning/marketing type as well (John Richards) to make sure the end user perspective is also being covered. You can assume that even though I am not on the working group in person, I will be there in spirit since I communicate with both John and Inder on a regular basis.

• Data portability is an idea long championed, and becoming more important all the time.  As we continue to load our online lives on to various social networking sites, the concept of making it easy to get that information back off again, and re-using the information on the next big site without having to start over from scratch are compelling, reasonable, and just plain logical.  Why would you want it any other way?.
• It's a good sign that DataPortability.Org is gaining traction.  It's also a good sign that Microsoft has joined.  While Microsoft certainly can't be thought of as a leader in the move to open up our data, it has been making serious strides to open up a number of its platforms, and a common vision shared by the members of DataPortability.Org could make control of our own data something closer to a reality.

• MySpace has just announced that they will be launching their developer platform on February 5th. You can pre-register now by going to http://developer.myspace.com (requires login).
• rom a technology perspective, Kapur says most of the specific details will be released on the 5th, but he did emphasize that the company has maintained an open relationship with widget developers, and wants them to be able to use data from MySpace in their applications, potentially including your friend’s list. With Facebook moving to allow developers to host applications on third-party sites and DataPortability continuing to gain traction, this seems like the only way to go.
• Finally, Kapur told me that the MySpace Developer Program will support Google OpenSocial from day one. This may provide a much needed boost for OpenSocial, which has received criticism for offering very little in the way of tangible products since being announced.

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• Digg has joined the DataPortability Project, a group of websites cooperating to help you securely use your data however you want. Why? Because you own your data. It’s that simple. From the start, Digg has supported the idea that you own your own data.
• Digg already supports many of the open standards that let you use your data on sites other than Digg, including RSS, OPML, and hCard. We use RDF to embed the Creative Commons public domain dedication into each page. Just this week, we added MicroID, a Microformat that lets you prove to other services that you own your Digg user profile. We’ll be adding more open standards, such as OpenID, APML, OAuth, and XFN, in the coming months.

• I've been following the barrage of news regarding Data Portability with a mix of excitement and trepidation. I've been a proponent of OpenID, and regularly use services like PassPack to keep track of the ridiculous number of log-ins I seem to have accumulated. At the same time, I worry about what data is essentially mine, and what doesn't rightfully belong to me. I'm still not convinced that Robert Scoble owned the contact information for his 5000 "friends" on Facebook, and that is the facet of Data Portability that worries me, at least a little.
• I'm finding that the more avenues I have to share my data online, the more I find myself wanting to pull what I already have out there back. I find it hard to imagine that I'm the only person who worries about the over-reaching umbrella of Google linking up to every other site who joins the Data Portability Workgroup and the sheer amount of amassed information any one entity could end up possessing about me.

• DataPortability.org is heading up a workgroup that will hopefully do just that. While many groups and companies are taking part in this effort, the recent addition of a few big name players has attracted a lot of attention.
• WebProNews spoke with Chris Saad, the Co-Founder and Chairman of Data Portability.

• It is a frustrating fact of modern internet life. Users of websites such as Facebook and Google spend hours building up and maintaining friend lists and e-mail address books, but when it comes time to move such social information to another online service, they frequently find it impossible to get their data back out. Instead, they must start re-entering their personal details from scratch.
• That may soon change. Over the past year, growing numbers of influential voices have been calling for the creation of common standards for "data portability" — a move that would enable widespread sharing of social information between websites.
• Supporters of data portability admit that it is still early days. "There are millions of people involved [but] there are only a relatively small number of social networking sites that are exporting," says Berners-Lee.
• Privacy is likely to be a key sticking point as companies attempt to convince users to trust them to broadcast their information to other websites. Members of the DataPortability Workgroup stress that any scheme would include controls to prevent sensitive personal information from being sent out without a user's permission.

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