Our Data, Ourselves
How much of your information do you really own? It’s not something that the average consumer thinks about a lot until healthy competition gives them a reason to. If you look at the wireless industry, losing your cell phone number was just the cost of changing carrier until people realized that it didn’t make any sense and that they shouldn’t own their information.
The people at DataPortability.org are hoping to do the same thing with personal data online, like social network profiles. To take it directly from the source, their mission is:
To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community.
According to ReadWriteWeb, the movement got a big boost today with the addition of Brad Fitzpatrick, the inventor of LiveJournal and one of the Google leads on the OpenSocial platform, and Benjamin Ling, who is a major cog in the Facebook platform. Although there was no firm commitment to data portability by either of the companies, who are both probably the leaders in the collection of personal data (with Yahoo! and MS), the move represents a huge shift in stature for the concept that people truly own the information they care to share with these companies and have the freedom to take it wherever they choose.
It’s a big move but I wouldn’t be so quick to call it the “bombshell” that ReadWriteWeb is labeling it. For starters, I just don’t think there is enough of a push from consumers to force companies like Facebook to give up something that is this valuable to them. Why would Facebook make it easier for consumers to hastily take their data to another social network if it didn’t somehow contribute to its longevity. Similarly, Google’s entire business model is based on being able to tailor advertising to specific instances of data that are exclusive to their media properties. What is the immediate value in giving some of that away?
While this may be a case of the big boys keeping an eye on the situation more than moving it forward, it’s certainly an encouraging sign for not only consumers but also Web innovators everywhere that are trying to eliminate the hurdles of moving from one platform to another.
