Facebook, Google And Plaxo Join The DataPortability Workgroup

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1. JeffC
   

   January 8th, 2008 at 9:56 am

   So I’m guessing this will change that whole ballyhoo about Scoble being vaporized for transporting his data off Facebook without permission.

2. Carla
   

   January 8th, 2008 at 9:56 am

   hell just froze over

3. Dheeraj Sultanian
   

   January 8th, 2008 at 10:01 am

   Your Google CrunchBase is totally wrong - aquisition price $1.7B? Founded 1996? Corrections please…

4. Joey3fingers
   

   January 8th, 2008 at 10:01 am

   We need more information on what this exactly means. Are you just telling us that Google now has all of our contacts now?

5. peter bihr
   

   January 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am

   What it means, among other things, is that we (the users) eventually will be able to move around our social networks. In the best case scenario this would mean the end of walled garden social networks. So there’s massive potential here, let’s see how it all turns out!

6. Webbyist
   

   January 8th, 2008 at 10:05 am

   So I guess these social sites will know me better than how I know myself

7. moe
   

   January 8th, 2008 at 10:06 am

   Isn’t OpenID part of the DataPortability doc? This seems too good to be true.

8. Kin Lane
   

   January 8th, 2008 at 10:06 am

   This is wonderful. Great to see the openness of them. I was getting worried about Facebook being willing to place nice with others.

9. Jim
   

   January 8th, 2008 at 10:06 am

   Thank Scobelizer for laying down on the tracks.

10. PhilK
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:08 am

    I hope one of their first goals will be to establish a sane contact format. Google’s is different from Facebook is different from Outlook is different from Thunderbird is different from Zimbra. One Contact format to rule them all would be a dream.

11. Steel
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Google isn’t stupid. Advantage Google. Facebook just flinched. Game essentially over. Welcome to the World of Google Internet. Where is Al Gore when he is needed?

12. Hasan Luongo
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    while I agree with Mike that fb was correct in halting Scoble’s account for clearly violated the terms of use - i’m stoked to hear the FB is joining this group.

    i think they have taken a lot of lumps for being a closed network - but as of now aren’t all the networks closed?

    flexibility and openness are good things for all!

13. Judi Sohn
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:14 am

    Communication is always a good thing. I just hope when they’re ready for implementation that Facebook, Google, et. al. set privacy levels so the default is that users must opt-in to let their data be shared with other services. So to my mind, JeffC, that doesn’t change anything about that whole ballyhoo.

14. Nicole Simon
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    Great news and congrats to everybody involved. One can only hope that the discussion around facebooks silo data (latest with the outburst about Scoble’s Plaxo test) has pushed Facebook to realize faster that no matter how the personal view point is, there is a common demand for being able to access ‘my’ data the way I want it.

    There will be downsides, of course. But hopefully a lot of upsides as well.

    PhilK: vcf works rather well on most of them, though it would be great if there would be some advancements. With this there may be a push to better apis and such, which hopefully will bring it forward.

15. Phil Avner
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:20 am

    A day to remember? Frothy much?

16. Koby
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:23 am

    @PhilK

    Wouldn’t this be the vCard format? I thought that it was pretty standard…

17. Baher
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:31 am

    Turns out that Scoble’s incident has been good for the whole industry

    I’m hoping that we start seeing some real-world results soon.

18. man on the moon
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:31 am

    sounds like it was all a big stunt with plaxo and FB. Plaxo is clearly the PR winner out of all of this.

19. Zach Weisman
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:32 am

    I’m still skeptical…Joining the organization is a great way to get people of their ass and instantly kill the immediate bad publicity. We will see if facebook fully endorses the ideals of this organization OR if they use their power to change those ideals to their liking.

    In either case, they just bought some cool off time.

    PS…MOST Facebook apps suck. Congratulations you’ve entered a sword fight with a smelly pirate hooker who wants to see if you have a crush on them by comparing your musical tastes? WTF?

20. Solofo
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:33 am

    That’s a great news.

    In less than 10 days, the ScobleGate has been a great leverage to open up the social network business. Right now, let’s see what kind of data will be freely opened up. Good news for Socnet aggregator like us (beezbox.com)

21. WhatsNext
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:37 am

    *******I THINK THIS IS BAD NEWS FOR NEW START-UPS.*******

    If any system of which data of the user is shared across multiple sites, would the valuation of those sites using the shared information not be cut by at least 50%?

    Lets take Facebook for example. I figure their multi-billion dollar valuation is for their ability to reach to millions, and the information they have about all of those users.

    If then one company, lets take OpenSocial (google) has all that information, they are the true big-wigs.

    So, for convenience, its great, but for the sites using it, it won’t be as valuable if their looking for an exit-strategy, right?

    I’m not an economist here, so please let me know if I am way off, but thats how I see it going down.

22. AnonTroll
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:39 am

    I love how everyone is creaming about how it’s a whole new world, etc. etc. This means nothing. Microsoft has been a member of plenty standards working groups too, and IBM before them. You need to be a member of the working group in order to stall it.

23. scratchiti
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:43 am

    WhatsNext (@21) I think you are incorrect. Now, if another site using social networking wants to start up, it can easily access your existing information from facebook, google, etc, so there are fewer barriers to entry.

24. Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:43 am

    “Data Portability” 08

    http://alisaleonard.blogspot.c.....up_08.html

25. Will Pate
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    Fantastic news, kudos to the folks at Google and Facebook who championed this idea and got their companies on board.

26. Wills
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:46 am

    Great. Now Scobles ego will reach new heights.

27. Jason White
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:54 am

    Zach (comment 19) hit this on the head. Read the announcement carefully. Facebook has done nothing more than “join the working group as official representatives.”

    This guarantees nothing about FB (or anyone else, for that matter) opening up. If anything, FB may use its weight and allure/influence to try to destroy this movement or cause delay now that it is part of the group.

    From the facts above, I would say this is less of a “day that will be remembered” and more of a “day upon which something happened that will be worthy of keeping an eye on.”

28. Mark
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:58 am

    Great. More Scoble == Ghandi claims.

    Head over to DP’s website and you’ll see four whitepapers (Action Packs!), all of which aren’t close to complete. They do have 26(!) versions of their logo for you to drool at though. Don’t expect a single thing on Facebook to change until at least ‘09.

29. EH
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:58 am

    This is a thinly-veiled campaign for you to lower your data-security standards.

30. Zach
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 10:58 am

    @27 J White….

    Agreed. The red flags are up. Thanks.

31. Scrivs
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 11:07 am

    As other have mentioned large companies join workgroups all the time, mainly to get the inside scoop of what type of new standards are being passed. This has nothing to do with them opening things up and I guarantee that they still won’t open up most of their data as everyone wants them to do. That is their only strong point and the only thing that makes an ad platform for them viable. What else would the be able to stand on? The bulletin board?

    Like many other workgroups I envision this one simply being a huge waste of time and you join up so you can at least say “we tried”.

32. Saim Baig
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 11:12 am

    Very good news.Social media site to another height now.

33. Lapp
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 11:27 am

    What does this mean for Open Social now?

34. Vijay
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 11:35 am

    Very good news, companies like LimeAll (www.LimeAll.com) could adopt common standards and provide same applications with portable data.

35. runningsomewhere
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    Linkbait. Poorly written article. Does Facebook having a representative at the DataPortability Group really mean much? They haven’t agreed to adopt any such standards. I agree it’s a significant step but it’s not as heavenly as your article implies. Furthermore, do you actually think they responded to your invitation? Geez..

36. Srinagesh Eranki
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Yes this is good news. When (or should it be “if”) implemented, it will mean rich pickings for all (new or re-jigged) applications.

    It will definitely trigger a lot more innovation in this space.

37. Michael
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

    I hate to say this, but:

    a) joining a standards committee can be a tactic to making to the standards process slower. maybe this is fb’s tactic?

    b) it’s a LONG way from a workgroup to a working (aka implemented) standard in any case. many standards have not made it.

    –
    http://viibee.com - online dating is fun again

38. Marc Canter
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    add my name to the list

39. Glen M
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    The dataportability.org web site is a lame joke. And the Google group too. I doubt that FB takes it seriously. Quite possible, that they joint it to STFU people in the midst of Scoblegate and slowly sabotage from inside in long run.

40. Kin Lane
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    We all need to put the pressure on Facebook to join OpenSocial now.

    All of use in the tech community need to do it. Can we get someone to start a scandal like Scoble? Around OpenSocial?

    Can we hack in some OpenSocial non profit widgets or something to get in trouble?

41. Nick Dynice
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    The individual pieces of the standards are already in place. These are OpenID, OAuth, XFN, OPML, RSS, APML and there are available right now as free and open source libraries for each of these available in most programming languages (unlike Open Social). There is nothing stopping anyone from building something that uses all of these standards. @21 I would say that this means this is even a bigger opportunity for startups. It means that could start implementing these technologies. And when the best practices are presented, it will take minor tweaking for such a startup to become compliant.

    So, if the data is portable, web app startups who use these standards will need to compete on portability, reliability, speed to innovation. This competition means that consumers win. As far as a networks relationship to user are concerned: If you love someone, set them free, if they come back, they’re yours, if they don’t, they never were. These new startups will love their users, so setting them free if the user wants to be free is a no brainer.

    This announcement could be viewed similar to Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe announcing that were all going to use http, dns or “internet e-mail” or something like that back in 1994 (I admit I don’t know enough details about the history of net standards to make this an accurate analogy, so if you have a better one, go for it).

42. JeremyB
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    Think of all those Yahoo! Mail and Gmail users seamlessly making their contacts the center for their social own social experiences, many (if not most) for the very first time. All the Facebook-mania aside, social media is just getting warmed up.

    But even if Facebook comes through and opens the garden, I wouldn’t expect anything resembling a flight of users. Facebook became Facebook in no small part by delivering a great user experience, and so long as it continues to make people happy, people will flock to it, data potability or not.

    More here: http://brijit.wordpress.com/20.....like-hell/

43. Sree Hemm
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    good for both - facebook & google

44. Sam Davyson
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    I’m not sure about this announcement. First of all everyone who has said that no one is actually committing to anything here is absolutely right. Just because people who work at Google and Facebook are on the committee it doesn’t mean that data is going to be portable from Facebook to NewSocialNetwork.com anytime soon.

    I think that the issue is being clouded though. If you could move your information about friends etc (your social graph) right now would you? Where would you move it to? Moving your social graph is not going to be useful unless all of your friends (or at least some of them) move too. In this way making data portable is not really going to change anything about the lock in with social networks. People are going to stay where people they know are. Similar arguments debunk the significance of Open Social. People don’t switch networks for applications or widgets. They move because of their friends.

    What is needed instead is to make the rich experience of a social network standardised. I think Google knows this. The real future is ONE social network for everyone. I see social networking as an extension to email. From Gmail I can email people on Hotmail and they can email me back. There is a communication standard there. So what we need is a standard account type (that is OpenID) and then standards for feeds of activity (that’s RSS), and standards for everything else you do on a social network. Once the social networking “scape” is fully open in this way people can use their own bit of the network (essentially their network provider) like Facebook, or Google, or Bebo, or whatever. And it might have slightly different features just like the way that Gmail has different features to Hotmail but it would have all been the same network. So I can switch from Google to Facebook and I’ll see a different interface but can browse my friends on whichever network provider they’ve chosen.

    OpenID and a standard social graph is the key. As far as I can tell there is no benefit in the “half-way” solution where I can move my data from Facebook to Orkut. My friends will still be on Facebook. Fingers crossed this can go all the way.

45. Cédric
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    That’s today’s big news !!
    Scoble’s FB account is still closed, so far…

46. q
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 3:58 pm

    Yes, Duncan. This qualifies as big news for Facebook. Good job.

47. Technicle
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

    Good Facebook.. though, again, it’s the user who owns the data, and all serious social networking service provider should join..

48. Dennis Howlett
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 11:23 pm

    While everyone is getting excited about this, let’s not forget this has to work in the context of legal frameworks which are very different. Tell me how that parses to the notion of a flat world where my attention data is free to roam the earth?

    This is a dead duck on those grounds alone.

49. Lynoure Braakman
    

    January 8th, 2008 at 11:59 pm

    “If you can’t beat them, join them”. I think simply joining a workgroup does not mean a company will be automatically embracing the goal. They might join just for the PR or in order to understand what’s going on.

50. Alexey Gabsatarov
    

    January 9th, 2008 at 3:43 am

    I do not see why Facebook (or in fact anyone except for a few players like Google and Ning) would ever voluntarily embrace social data portability concept.
    Just think what would happen if all data becomes available to all social network sites? Given enough time, people will evenly distribute across ever-growing number of “containers”. Building a “container” will be no difficult than building a theme for WorldPress blog or a new social network on Ning and just as much profitable.

    Google will indeed benefit from improving context relevant advertising. Facebook and other social network sites will lose.

51. sjkg
    

    January 10th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    So what would it do to individual users’ privacy control if everybody joined this? One thing I like about Facebook is that it gives me (some) control over what is done with my information. Why would I want to turn my information over to some big new network over which I don’t have control? In other words, the silo can be good for individual users.

    In order to provide privacy, you’d probably have to give people access to this network. But then I’d be interacting with that network rather than Facebook. So Facebook’s competitive advantage would suddenly be gone.

52. Guardian Angel
    

    January 13th, 2008 at 10:39 pm

    Facebook is not as secure as you think. It’s no good having your account set to ‘private’ if you have the ‘view friends’ option visible. It’s simply a matter of trawling ‘friends’ profiles who’s account arn’t private. Anything you do or say (with your non private friends), tagged photos etc is visible to everyone, and not necessarily people who are genuine friends either. Just log in under a false name and join whatever network you wish to trawl.

    I don’t mean to sound like a creepy stalker, but it’s the reality of human nature. A lot of young people I’m sure are totaly oblivious to the privacy implications these social networks can have. But I guess we do live in the age of Big Brother, fame and celebrity. I suppose a lot of the younger generation don’t mind and actually want to be seen by others. Trouble is, when they get a little older they will think like an older person. But then it is too late.

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