As I've written about in the past, I continue to remain concerned that social networks are really just "walled gardens" that are isolated from each other. Late last week, Robert Scoble getting temporarily kicked out of Facebook brought the attention of many of us to "DataPortability.org" and its "dataportability-public" Google Group. Now, today brings word that Facebook, who has usually been a holdout in "open" announcements to date (like OpenSocial) will be joining in to the Dataportability.org project. The news can be found here:
- Particls Blog: "Individuals from Plaxo, Google and Facebook join DataPortability.org Workgroup"
- Read/Write Web: "Bombshell: Google and Facebook Join DataPortability.org"
- TechCrunch: "Facebook, Google And Plaxo Join The DataPortability Workgroup"
The news is outstanding, really, for those of us who want this kind of data portability. To have basically all the major players working together will be excellent. It would, indeed, be great to have the walls start coming down...
The devil, of course, lies in the details... time will tell whether true actions will emerge out of the DataPortability.org initiative.
Still, it's a great way to start - and I've definitely joined the GoogleGroup mailing list to join in the evolution. Let's see if the walls can shake a bit, eh?
Technorati Tags: facebook, dataportability.org, dataportability, data portability, social network portability, social networks, social media, social networking, google, plaxo
