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My last column discussed the brand utility supported entertainment model in which content providers and marketers work upstream to create customized complimentary experiences. One option would be to align this model with the open standard objectives of DataPortability.org. Their mission: to gather "existing open standards into a blueprint for a social, open, remixable Web where your online identity, media, contacts and content can follow you wherever you go."

For brands and content creators, that means conversation would truly have to be initiated by the user. The user would own the data, and the brand content offering would have to be valuable enough to warrant an exchange. In essence, brand content would be bought with "data currency."

There are brand enthusiasts who participate in campaigns on an ongoing basis. Yet each time they return, these fans must register and sign-up for the full experience. If the brand were to embrace technologies such as OpenID, not only would it provide their fans access to cross-promotional properties around that campaign, it would also provide easy access to all future campaigns. And with future potential of data portability, people could take those experiences with them, introducing content to friends and hopefully igniting passionate new fans.

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.

MySpace has just announced that they will be launching their developer platform on February 5th. You can pre-register now by going to http://developer.myspace.com (requires login).

rom a technology perspective, Kapur says most of the specific details will be released on the 5th, but he did emphasize that the company has maintained an open relationship with widget developers, and wants them to be able to use data from MySpace in their applications, potentially including your friend’s list. With Facebook moving to allow developers to host applications on third-party sites and DataPortability continuing to gain traction, this seems like the only way to go.

Finally, Kapur told me that the MySpace Developer Program will support Google OpenSocial from day one. This may provide a much needed boost for OpenSocial, which has received criticism for offering very little in the way of tangible products since being announced.

The scuffle today between Facebook and Google has very little to do with user privacy and everything to do with user control. A huge battle is underway between Google, MySpace and Facebook around control of user profiles and, therefore, users themselves. And their three new products, Data Availability, Facebook Connect, and Friend Connect, are all designed to further that goal.

Ultimately I hope that I can keep my identity, friend list, photographs, videos and everything else that constitutes the (de)Centralized Me at any service provider that I trust (meaning I trust them to protect that data, but never go against my wishes and try to keep it to themselves if that isn’t what I want), and just tell sites like Facebook and everyone else where to grab it.

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)

As the web grows exponentially in scale and complexity, an issue that becomes increasingly pressing is data ownership. There has been a lot of noise lately about how Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, and even MySpace’s Data Availability.

The Data Portability Project is trying very, very hard to solve these serious issues. They’re seeking to unite the socio-rhetorico-legal precedent with the growing list of open technologies and specifications (OpenID, OAuth, RSS, OPML, MicroFormats, Creative Commons, to name a few) and make sure that these proprietary bits, bytes, friends, enemies, birthdays, activies, pictures, videos, lifestyles, etc. are made open to the content creators (read: YOU, not Mark Zuckerberg).