What is the DataPortability group going to deliver?
January 11, 2008 //
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 that 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 wrong, 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.
Gerald Wiggins says 
marco goldschmied says 
Sharon Crossley says 
“circular conversations” is exactly my big worry about it. Well said Paul.
January 15th, 2008
“best practice guidelines which organisations can sign up to.”
- we tried that, got shot down, regrouped and evolving to a similar goal that is through advocacy rather than arrogantly asserting ourselves
A lot of work is the policy side which can be only evidence through conversation with those that do the work and research. Determining things like what constitutes user rights, or the ‘right’ guidelines, is a time consuming thing which we are making incremental progress.
We’ve currently got in prototype an open standards grid that effectively allows you to determine what standards and implementations companies support.
Several other things have been achieved internally, and we have other work in the pipeline - but with all of us having full time jobs, this is a hobby and the progress is slower than we all want
November 3rd, 2008