Long a dream within the Development Community, true Data portability has been today just that, a dream. But with both Google and Yahoo jumping on to the OpenID bandwagon, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look around and see what is new in Data Portability and low and behold I found this in PC World - Data Portability: Reasonable Goal or Impossible Dream?:
It's hard to argue against data portability. After all, who could oppose giving people control over the data they load, publish and store on Web sites?
This is particularly timely now that average users have started feeling the "network fatigue" that comes from maintaining multiple social-networking profiles, e-mail accounts, blogs, address book applications, social-news-sites memberships and the like.
And yet, while it is an important and unquestionably worthy endeavor, data portability faces thorny challenges in areas such as technology, privacy, security, business, and regulation and legislation.
...Despite the magnitude of the endeavor, participants interviewed feel optimistic that the workgroup will yield concrete results that will bring about industry-wide implementations of data portability solutions.
"Where there is a will, there's a way. And so far it seems like everyone has thrown their will behind the project. Now they need to find a way," said Chris Saad, cofounder of the DataPortability Workgroup, in an e-mail interview.
The DataPortability Workgroup positions itself at a higher conceptual level than the groups working to develop specific technical standards for data portability.
"Our goal is to highlight, not compete [with], the work of other groups, and to encourage the adoption of their work with vendors and users," Saad said.
The workgroup's main accomplishment so far, Saad said, is that it brought people to the table and started to outline the documents it plans to deliver, chief among which will be the DataPortability Technical Blueprint, envisioned as a key reference document for a complete implementation architecture for the data portability stack of standards.
---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.
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