At Worldchanging I recently posted a couple of columns wherein I mentioned a lack of complete data portability. In one of those pieces, I said “what I’d really like to see, and haven’t yet, is a good Open Source approach to the social graph, and standards to make identity and social graph portable.”
The DataPortability Workgroup is just what I was looking for:
- Philosophy As users, our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by, and shared between our chosen tools or vendors. We need a DHCP for Identity. A distributed File System for data. The technologies already exist, we simply need a complete reference design to put the pieces together.
- Mission 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.
The workgroup just surged forward with the addition of members from Plaxo (Joseph Smarr), Google (Brad Fitzpatrick), and Facebook (Benjamin Ling).
The Workgroup is working on a “Data Portability Reference Design” that will describe best practices for integrating existing standards and protocols. The goal is for all that data we store at whatever social sites we join to be accessible from every site. I’ll report more about specifics as I follow the Workgroup’s progress.
