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It is a frustrating fact of modern internet life. Users of websites such as Facebook and Google spend hours building up and maintaining friend lists and e-mail address books, but when it comes time to move such social information to another online service, they frequently find it impossible to get their data back out. Instead, they must start re-entering their personal details from scratch.

That may soon change. Over the past year, growing numbers of influential voices have been calling for the creation of common standards for "data portability" — a move that would enable widespread sharing of social information between websites.

Supporters of data portability admit that it is still early days. "There are millions of people involved [but] there are only a relatively small number of social networking sites that are exporting," says Berners-Lee.

It had to happen sooner or later. We’ve had Technorati. We’ve had TechMeme. Now we have Tweetmeme, which will track what’s hot on micro-blogging platform Twitter. The business of tracking the online conversation just a got shot in the arm with the tech equivalent of crack cocaine.

The social web is booming, signing up new users and generating new pieces of unique content at a steady clip. A recurring theme of the social web is "data portability," the ability to change providers without leaving behind accumulated contacts and content. Most nodes of the social web agree data portability is a good thing, but the exact process of authentication, authorization, and transport of a given user and his or her data is still up in the air. In this post I will take a deeper look at the current best practices of the social Web from the point of view of its major data hubs. We will take a detailed look at the right and wrong ways to request user data from social hubs large and small, and outline some action items for developers and business people interested in data portability and interoperability done right.

Ultimately, the problem represents an opportunity for Internet companies. "In the end, whoever moves first to be truly open will have the advantage," Saad said. J. Trent Adams, founder and chief innovator at Matchmine, another vendor pushing for data portability, concurs. A stealthy startup could develop a clever application or service built on data portability standards and force other vendors to respond. "All of a sudden, it's the right idea, and the big boys will have to react," Adams said. In other words, Internet companies who insist on locking up their users' data to protect their businesses might soon find themselves instead stuck in the mud.

The business risks for Web 3.0 are fundamentally changing with increased public scrutiny of data privacy, portability, expanded Web Services, data sharing, cloud computing, etc. New privacy laws, new technological capabilities, and new user demands have created a situation where the question most frequently cited by students of Web 3.0 implementations have asked: we understand how beneficial it is to link data and derive new improved services, knowledge about our users/customers but what about privacy, regulation from the consumer perspective?

Key questions are discussed: who owns user data? How should users be able to reuse it? Why should companies consider allowing their users' personal data to be easily transportable? The answer here is: because in the end it will bring our users/customers closer, a finding many major enterprises have realized: Nokia, etc.

The core idea of vendor relationship management (VRM) is simple: the more empowered individuals are when it comes to managing and using personal data – including the ability to manage their relationships with vendors – the greater the benefits to both sides.

Meanwhile, new technologies such as infocards (which create a secure “pipeline” for two parties that want to share information online) make it possible for customers to “co-manage” customer databases. Addresses and contact details can be updated in advance, so that organisations do not discover that the change has taken place too late.

Brett McDowell, executive director of Liberty Alliance, expects a high percentage of member companies to seek certification for the VPI standard. “If these programmes are put in place, there is no way this won’t change the way markets work,” he says.

The World Wide Web Foundation seeks to advance One Web that is free and open, to expand the Web's capability and robustness, and to extend the Web's benefits to all people on the planet. The Web Foundation brings together business leaders, technology innovators, academia, government, NGOs, and experts in many fields to tackle challenges that, like the Web, are global in scale.

The high profile but heretofore loosely organized Data Portability Working Group announced last night that it has elected its first group of Steering Group officers. The Working Group strives to help user data become freed for secure re-use across different websites and services. The first chair of the Steering Group will be Daniela Barbosa, who is a Business Development Manager, at Synaptica, a Dow Jones company.

Historically, online media tend to start this way. The early services, such as CompuServe, Prodigy or AOL, began as “walled gardens” before they opened up to become websites. The early e-mail services could send messages only within their own walls (rather as Facebook's messaging does today). Instant-messaging, too, started closed, but is gradually opening up. In social networking, this evolution is just beginning. Parts of the industry are collaborating in a “data portability workgroup” to let people move their friend lists and other information around the web. Others are pushing OpenID, a plan to create a single, federated sign-on system that people can use across many sites.

Gartner analysts at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Las Vegas discussed what they believe will be the most disruptive technologies through 2012. Disruptive technologies are those that force changes in industry models, business processes, vendor types, products and services, as well as the all-important user model. Take a look at this list and tell us whether you think something has been omitted—or just plain doesn't belong. This list is ranked in order from least disruptive to most disruptive.

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.

The change also raises a strong need for theoretical, empirical and applied studies related to how people may interact on the Web, how they actually do so, and what new possibilities and challenges are emerging in the social, business and technology dimensions.

This regulation implements the provisions of M.G.L. c. 93H relative to the standards to be met by persons who own, license, store or maintain personal information about a resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  This regulation establishes minimum standards to be met in connection with the safeguarding of personal information contained in both paper and electronic records.  Further purposes are to (i) ensure the security and confidentiality of such information in a manner consistent with industry standards, (ii) protect against anticipated threats or hazards to the security or integrity of such information, and (iii) protect against unauthorized access to or use of such information in a manner that creates a substantial risk of identity theft or fraud against such residents.