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How do you explain to an end-user what DataPortability is, why they might want it, and where they might get it?

How do you explain to a developer what DataPortability is, why they might want it, and how they might achieve it?

Developers learn most effectively by developing something. Users learn most effectively by using something.

Who really owns your address book? Many Internet companies - like Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) - say unequivocally that you do. If you sign up for free e-mail accounts on their services, you're free to take your friends with you and export your contact lists to any service that you like.

But Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), while publicly embracing the idea of openness, has been saying something different behind the scenes. Since last summer, lawyers representing the company have been sending cease-and-desist letters to startups that offer new users the ability to import their Microsoft Hotmail contacts. In a move that Valley guys are deriding as ham-handed, Microsoft is offering a quid pro quo: Third-party sites can access Hotmail contacts if they make Microsoft's instant-messaging client available to their users - for 25 cents per user per year. Then the company says it will waive the fee if the sites make Messenger the exclusive in-network messaging client. Such a deal.

There is a better way, of course - though it remains to be seen whether it will work. A group of companies, aligned under the banner of the DataPortability Workgroup, is trying to craft standards that would make it easy for the data we collect online to move as freely and securely from one website to another as we do. As long as two sites abide by the DataPortability rules, they can effortlessly send anything back and forth between them - data, photos, address books. "It's safe, secure, painless," says Chris Saad, the Aussie who co-founded and chairs the DPW. Hundreds of individuals and several leading companies - including Yahoo, Facebook, Google, and even Microsoft - have signed on to the workgroup, and Saad says he's optimistic that we'll see a system in place later this year.

This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community. Today’s announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had. While the OpenID Foundation serves a stewardship role around the community’s intellectual property, the Foundation’s board itself does not make any decisions about the specifications the community is collaboratively building.

Anyone who has been involved in Open Source software development knows that you have to have a steering group, and there has to be some hierarchy. You can't get a ship moving in any direction with 50 oars in the water each rowing in their own direction. I understand that in order to have buy-in from so many different groups, no one wants to alienate anyone, but the reference made at the meeting (and I'm sorry I forgot who made it) to OpenID was a valid one. They developed the technology, then took it out to various companies and asked for buy-in. In order to "strike while the iron is hot," the luxury of having 100 people all defining things differently and addressing different concerns before there is even a rudimentary roadmap makes the scope of the project much larger than it has to be, and slows down progress.

In the last couple of weeks there have been a number of very positive steps forward for Data Portability in general and the DataPortability Project specifically. These include wins by the OpenID Foundation, the IC report, the DataPortability Report and others.

A couple of trends, though, are causing me a little concern and may require a slight course correction before they spin out of control and fragment, rather than standardize, the ecosystem.

1. Tightly coupled OpenID Implementations

Time to continue the conversation about DataPortability... this time using video.We want to hear your thoughts about DataPortability recorded as a short video. We hope to share these videos individually as well as compile them into a single video to help the community understand expectations, goals and themes that are emerging in the discussion.

On Sunday, we had a significant discussion on data portability and about the activities, responsibilities and opportunities of and for the eponymous group which has recently generated much hype and buzz but little, (as far as I’ve see) clarity and/or cogent strategy for advancing its expansive charter:

The frustration over the minimal barrier to “becoming a member” of the group (you simply have to sign up for a mailing list) and the focus on large vendors without advancing an agenda with teeth and clearly defined metrics for success was palpable. But so was the desire to make some progress, and if not come to complete agreement, to at least identify concerns shared by the majority of us and perhaps develop a strategy to deflate the hype to date and get the group moving in a productive direction.

So anyway, I do believe that there is an opportunity here and Chris Saad is correct that getting a number of the prominent players in this arena to come to the table on this topic is a feat; however, simply bringing them together without engaging with the gnarly problems and policies that have kept data portability from becoming a reality could bring more confusion and angst than benefit.

Despite the valid concerns that some have with Google’s Social Graph API, I thought I would talk about the technical possibilities. My social graph may be of particular interest becuase I had used my Wordpress blog’s XFN feature to mark up the blogs I read as “muse” and my profile on at least 10 social networks as “me.” Using the Google’s Social Graph API demo you can see my extensive list of FOAF and XFN URLs. There is also a machine readable format that could be fed into a new social network to find friends on that network. (click for a larger version)