Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Before I ask the question, I’m 100% behind any initiative that supports open standards and best practices. Segala’s entire business model is based on it. I also support the idea of being able to port your data from one application/platform to another application/platform.

Ok, so now that I’ve got the disclaimer out of the way, what exactly, is the DataPortability group going to do?

I’ve noticed that the Web site provides hyperlinks which point to pages which say ‘contribute to the various standards communities’, but those pages just point to a list of links which point to wikipedia entries.

Then you have Robert Scoble’s video (opens in a different window) on the main index page. The explanatory title says ‘Watch Robert Scoble explain the DataPortability story’, but all I see is Robert talking about his removal from Facebook. It doesn’t tell me what the DataPortability group is going to deliver apart from goodwill.

I’m not against this group or the ideas they hold dear to their heart, but unless they actually put something more meaningful together, they’ll continue to have circular conversations that everyone is in agreement with. Getting organisations to agree to the concept isn’t good enough in my experience.

My recommendation

What I’d like to see, are some best practice guidelines which organisations can sign up to. Perhaps create a Trustmark (visual badge) to demonstrate their commitment and conformance to those guidelines. Otherwise it’s just a one-way conversation with no proof that organisations intend to permit the seamless portability of users’ data.

I still don’t want Facebook to change my email address to text as that’ll make it way too easy for companies like Plaxo to harvest and SPAM me. Please note that I’m not referring to Robert here. I believe he used a test account to demonstrate a point. Plaxo is in the rong, Robert just made a silly mistake in my opinion.

Remember that Facebook is protecting users by not allowing people to easily port information, whether that was/is their motivation or not. If none of us have the answer, how can we expect Facebook to make such a massive change over night.

Protecting our privacy and enabling us to extract our data from an application are two entirely different things.