After publishing an invitation to Facebook to join the DataPortability Working Group January 4, we never thought that Facebook would accept it. Today changes everything you’ve ever thought about social-networking data and lock-in before, because today Facebook, Google and Plaxo have joined the DataPortability Workgroup.
Google and Plaxo joining are a positive, however given that both have previously joined together for platforms such as OpenSocial it’s not that significant, but Facebook is another matter. On January 4 Michael sort of defended Facebook’s stance against Plaxo pulling data from Facebook on the grounds that “Facebook also has a very good reason for protecting email addresses - user privacy.” Today, by joining the DataPortability Working Group Facebook is embracing open standards and open access, and that is a huge fundamental change from its previous stance on being locked in to closed standards.
I spoke with the head of the DataPortability Group Chris Saad prior to this post (Chris is also the CEO of Faraday Media.) After about 24 hours of correspondence, the following are to join the working group as official representatives of their respective companies: Joseph Smarr (Plaxo), Brad Fitzpatrick (Google) and Benjamin Ling (Facebook).
The DataPortability Workgroup is actively working to create the ‘DataPortability Reference Design’ to document the best practices for integrating existing open standards and protocols for maximum interoperability (and here’s the key area) to allow users to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems.
There has been no shortage of people who have knocked Facebook for their closed standards prior to today, perhaps many of whom had a legitimate point. Today Facebook has taken the first step towards open standards and data portability, and despite those previous gripes they should be congratulated for it.
So I’m guessing this will change that whole ballyhoo about Scoble being vaporized for transporting his data off Facebook without permission.
hell just froze over
Your Google CrunchBase is totally wrong - aquisition price $1.7B? Founded 1996? Corrections please…
We need more information on what this exactly means. Are you just telling us that Google now has all of our contacts now?
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!
So I guess these social sites will know me better than how I know myself
Isn’t OpenID part of the DataPortability doc? This seems too good to be true.
This is wonderful. Great to see the openness of them. I was getting worried about Facebook being willing to place nice with others.
Thank Scobelizer for laying down on the tracks.
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.
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?
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!
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.
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.
A day to remember? Frothy much?
@PhilK
Wouldn’t this be the vCard format? I thought that it was pretty standard…
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.
sounds like it was all a big stunt with plaxo and FB. Plaxo is clearly the PR winner out of all of this.
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?
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)
*******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.
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.
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.
“Data Portability” 08
http://alisaleonard.blogspot.c.....up_08.html
Fantastic news, kudos to the folks at Google and Facebook who championed this idea and got their companies on board.
Great. Now Scobles ego will reach new heights.
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.”
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.
This is a thinly-veiled campaign for you to lower your data-security standards.
@27 J White….
Agreed. The red flags are up. Thanks.
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”.
Very good news.Social media site to another height now.
What does this mean for Open Social now?
Very good news, companies like LimeAll (www.LimeAll.com) could adopt common standards and provide same applications with portable data.
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..
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.
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.
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add my name to the list
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.
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?
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).
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/
good for both - facebook & google
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.
That’s today’s big news !!
Scoble’s FB account is still closed, so far…
Yes, Duncan. This qualifies as big news for Facebook. Good job.
Good Facebook.. though, again, it’s the user who owns the data, and all serious social networking service provider should join..
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.
“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.
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.