Joining the cavalcade of companies jumping on the open data bandwagon, LinkedIn has now joined Facebook, Google, Plaxo (announcement here) in joining the DataPortability Work Group.
LinkedIn has worked hard to become open since announcing their own open platform in June 2007 in response to Facebook, then becoming an initial OpenSocial launch partner in October 2007.
I spoke to the DataPortability Work Group head Chris Saad prior to the announcement and he told me that he was happy to see another leading social networking site join the group. Since the big announcement Tuesday he’s had a number of other approaches from leading sites to join the group, companies he wouldn’t name to me who might join in the coming days. It was only January 6 when we wrote the words “ultimately supporting open access to data is a positive thing…as social networking further matures in 2008, open access is a cause that may well find favor.” Little did we know then that there would be an almighty rush of companies signing up to work for open standards and data portability with the next four days. As much as it pains me on some levels to say this, thanks Robert Scoble, your Gandhi-esque resistance was the tipping point.
Update: Web developers from Flickr, SixApart, and Twitter have also joined.
I join the DataPortability Work Group!
Of course, I make no promises to support whatever standard is approved — or, more importantly, to work constructively for a standard that would lead to any more openness that I already have, but hey, Tech Crunch will write about it.
The real story here is why does anyone think that industry leaders joining a standards committee is news.
Is it not because this is a relatively new, forward-looking set of standards in the works and getting these notoriously closed mega-vendors to come to the table is a remarkable sign of validation for an emerging paradigm? And ’cause everyone’s got their fingers crossed that it will mean something?
Oh and Steve, good going joining the working group. – now please try to make sure it aint just hot air, ok? Everybody wants to port their Steveness all over.
@Steve
I agree with your “I will believe when I see it” attitude,
but I don’t agree that this article is not news worthy.
This is a big movement and will result in new types of opportunities for start-ups and other companies, as well as have massive benefits for us the users.
Marshall, Carla – totally fair points, and my apologies for the extreme skepticism. I just wanted to emphasize that *at this point* the moves by Facebook, Google, etc are pure PR; the real test will come in a year or two.
I too hope that the walls come down.
It’s interesting to see the momentum building on this important topic.
they also said they joined Open Social, yet that never happened. I was hoping to create apps using Open Social and Linkedin.
This is a great way to get FREE publicity. Just jump onto every new standard that comes along, and let TC blog you
Social networking discovers lobbying. Let the bureaucracy begin!
I’m guessing one of the outgrowths of this “working group” is to codify the level of apathy users have in protecting their personal data. Step 2 will be to put it into law.
Venture Beat made an interesting point the other day:
http://ventureb...shing-the-feed/
It’s not just portability.
If the data is public, it should just be fully public an have the ability to be accessed by crawlers and robots and any other application which aggregated content.
So it’s not just the ability to be portable as it is the ability to be aggregated.
I really want this to be available indexed and sliced and diced Spinn3r on behalf of our clients.
I *tried* (keyword being tried) to get more details about DP from their website but really couldn’t find much details. Are there any substance to DP currently or just a lot of big-pie-in-the-sky “vapor standards”?
Valleywag is reporting that the main contributers to the DataPortability Work Group, are also employed as “Duke Nukem Forever” beta testers.
Finally had a chance to blog about this.
It’s not jus about data portability – it’s about crawling and equal access.
http://blog.spi...3r-and-soc.html
LinkedIn jumped on the OpenSocial bandwagon too – despite the fact that no one has been able to identify any benefit obtained by allowing widgets to operate on their site. They’ve also been slow in adding functionality to their site – there is little interactivity and although I have 150+ connections I’m rarely compelled to visit their site these days.
Lets hope they are really serious about data portability and not just interested in marketing themselves.
OMG, the data portability project is a freaking joke. First off, the site is utterly useless, pretty much having TOC along with a bunch of industry open standard acronyms scattered as “content”. If someone is serious about this effort, they sure aren’t serious in communicating the details to interested parties or IMO, what you get is what you see on the site which is nothing. The most promising thing about the effort is the phrase itself “Data Portability”. No wonder all the big boys jumped on the bandwagon. It’s a great way to get publicity and being labeled “open” when there is nothing to do.
Other than the giant players, isn’t it also time for the Group to also entertain the new players as well as those outside of the U.S.?
From the design of the page, there’s no obvious button to “Join”, giving the perception that it’s fast becoming a select closed group of elites.
Not that we or anybody is desperate to join, but in our opinion, as the Group is achieving some status (supported by advocates big and small), those who supported the Group before now just feel kinda excluded, instead of needed.
Just fyi,
/ac.
Its a band wagon. Dont see this ever being any good or popular.
just think the hype and attention the google opensocial network had, now look at it.
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http://www.xencasino.com