By Steve Repetti, on July 5th, 2011
Well, here we go again.
The big companies love to embrace data portability and the freedom it provides its users, not to mention the press and goodwill that comes with it, as long as it doesn’t conflict with their corporate agenda.
 Let’s call it what it is: Facebook and Google both support “convenient” data portability — at all times convenient for them, *sometimes* convenient for you.
Google and Facebook have both flirted with data portability and it was generally taken as a good sign when both hired leading open source/data portability advocates (Chris Messina and David Recordon respectively). Facebook’s APIs and social graph integration, as well as Google’s Takeout initiative, have been shining examples of the net result of this effort.
Still, despite these advances, both companies continue to “play” with your data – to your detriment. Back in February, Google removed an existing feature from its Android mobile phone operating system specifically to make it more difficult for users to integrate their Facebook contacts (Nexus S losing Facebook contacts sync as Google tightens data policy).
The latest salvo in this escalating war occurred while the US celebrated its Independence day holiday weekend: Facebook disabled a critical feature used to export your friends data (Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends). This appears to be a direct response to Google’s recent moves further into social networking: Google+ (Facebook blocks friend export tool in Google+ snub ).
The reality is that we gave both companies the right to monkey with our data. We accepted their terms of service when we joined their services and we continually agree when they make changes – for better or worse. And, while a few have left in protest, it is not practical to expect much more.
Let’s call it what it is: Facebook and Google both support “convenient” data portability — at all times convenient for them, *sometimes* convenient for you. And maybe that’s ok. After all, they are commercial enterprises answerable to boards and shareholders and subject to their leadership within.
I get it. Information is an asset, and why would anyone fiscally responsible intentionally dilute or give away an asset?
And therein is the conflict. Us versus them, my data versus their monetization of it.
I hereby challenge Google, Facebook, and all other interested parties to sit down at a DATA PORTABILITY SUMMIT and figure it out together.
This is complicated stuff. If Google and Facebook truly want to be the global purveyors of information that they purport to be, they’ll figure it out – or leave opportunity for the next company to come along and get it right. But the first thing they need to understand is that they cannot do it alone. When crafting global policy regarding user’s data they must include the user, otherwise they are simply more walled-gardens of varying heights.
So, before this thing spirals any further, let’s talk about it.
As Chairman of the International non-profit Data Portability organization, I hereby challenge Google, Facebook, and all other interested parties to sit down at a DATA PORTABILITY SUMMIT and figure it out together. Name the place, name the time – or your users will. Now is your chance to truly show leadership on a global scale. But know this: that coveted asset of information you possess exists solely because of your users. It’s ok to be capitalistic, and its good not to be evil, but it’s time to make data portability convenient for us all.
Interested in the DATA PORTABILITY SUMMIT? Let me know: steve@radwebtech.com
Steve Repetti
Chairman, DataPortability.org
By Phil Wolff, on June 30th, 2011
 Mike Swift writes up the personal data space as a contest between individuals and large corporations. Swift interviewed Kaliya Hamlin of the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and PDEC members Reputation.com, Personal, and Singly. The Consortium doesn’t approach the challenge as a direct conflict. They see a realignment of behavior by people and enterprises producing new economic value for both, weaving a third way that creates, respects, and enforces personal control over personal data.
These startups are finding their own way into the data portability and control challenges. Singly’s Locker Project is an open source personal data store, a place to hold your data on your own PC or server and put that data to use. Reputation.com offers a service to find and shape your publicly visible data across the web. Personal gives you tools share your life’s details, opinions and experiences with just those people you trust.
The Merc didn’t interview the large companies, NGOs and government agencies holding data about billions of people. While many of those enterprises have management champions for personal control, portability principles and business models don’t dominate their executive suites. Helping them find their way is another challenge.
By Steve Repetti, on June 28th, 2011
Google today unveiled a new service that provides advanced Data Portability across its diverse platform. Google Takeout (http://www.google.com/takeout) makes it easy to extract your data from a variety of Google Services including: Buzz, Contact and Circles, Picasa Web Albums, and Profile. The information is provided in a variety of formats, including vCard and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), and can be quickly downloaded onto your local computer.
In many ways this is not unlike the Data Portability initiatives over at Facebook, and it is certainly a welcome addition to the Google universe. And now that Google is moving more into the social networking space with its just announced Google+ project (http://plus.google.com), the value of Google’s Data Portability efforts to its end-users will likely substantially increase.
By Steve Repetti, on June 16th, 2011
Today, friends of Data Portability lost an ally in their cause when the Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, announced he will be leaving his post in August. Mr. Kundra was the first-ever Chief Information Officer of the United States. During his tenure, Mr. Kundra championed the use of open standards, cloud computing, accessibility, and data . . . → Read More: Data Portability Applauds US CIO, Mourns Departure
By Phil Wolff, on May 12th, 2011
 At last week’s Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View, California, I led a brainstorming session to identify risks to the success of the new National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC, pronounced “EN-stick”). The strategy is to encourage many non-government organizations to provide digital identity and personal data services in a way that meets the needs of individuals, identity providers and those who rely on digital identity. What could go wrong with a project like this? What can be done to avoid these threats and risks? To mitigate them when they show up? Meeting notes…
Continue reading IIW12: An NSTIC Project Risk Analysis
By Phil Wolff, on May 4th, 2011
We took a stab at rewriting the ten Portability Policy questions as user demands, behavior we want.
The list so far.
Document your APIs and data formats. Support existing identities. Support referencing to authoritative data in a location of my choosing. (include by reference) Support auto-updating from authoritative data in a . . . → Read More: Tuesday’s DataPortability session at IIW12
By Phil Wolff, on April 29th, 2011
When titans of industry and state meet, worlds can change. The World Economic Forum launched a three year “Rethinking Personal Data” project, including data portability. Their first report, Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class, shows their direction.
A new asset class? That’s a telling use of language. Investopedia refers to securities with “similar characteristics, behave similarly in the marketplace, and are subject to the same laws and regulations.” Stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, and intellectual property are common asset classes. Some managerial accountants defined human capital as a new asset class.
Securities and IP go back hundreds of years. As a new asset class, personal data will have its own characteristics and market behavior, its own laws and regulations. We’ve barely mapped this new landscape. U.S. law doesn’t even recognize a theory of rights associated with personal data. So there is a great deal of work ahead. Some of that is ours, at the DataPortability Project. It falls to the DPP to crisply define data portability’s purpose, why it matters, how it fits into lives lived digitally. That’s some of our work at next week’s Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View. [Skype me if you’d like an IIW discount code.]
Speed matters. A look at the chart below, from Bain, shows a rush to capitalize on billion dollar markets in data.
If we don’t embed data portability values and vision into the new identity and personal data infrastructure, it could take decades to achieve our goals.
So read WEF’s first report, below the fold. See where their thinking is now. And ask: where can we amplify their commitment to personal data portability?
Continue reading World Economic Forum starts work on Data Portability
By Phil Wolff, on April 25th, 2011
Dial or Skype details for this Wednesday’s Conference Call to start before IIW.
Here’s how you can bring the ideas in our data portability policy to hundreds of millions of people. I’ll need your help in May and June to start. In short: build portability principles into boilerplate identity contracts.
What’s a trust framework? . . . → Read More: #portability4trust: How we will bring data portability to trust frameworks this quarter.
By Phil Wolff, on April 25th, 2011
There’s data I create explicitly, like typing my name or dialing a phone number. Then there’s data I create as a byproduct of my using a product. Economist Richard H. Thaler writes in the New York Times that companies should share usage data with their customers. “Show Us the Data. (It’s Ours, . . . → Read More: NYT: Companies should give usage data to customers
By Phil Wolff, on April 10th, 2011
The ActivityStreams group’s technical efforts to finalize a spec in time for the next OpenSocial event in May are coming along nicely. What about the other elements that make for healthy protocol adoption?
Why am I posting AS updates to the DataPortability blog?
Activity Streams reflects our data portability values, helping users have their data wherever they go online. I’m participating in the AS effort on behalf of the #DPP.
— Phil Wolff, editor
We talked about what it takes to launch the ActivityStrea.ms site. This was about a half hour of our April 1st, 2011, four-hour lunch at Chevy’s in San Francisco during the Web 2.0 Expo.
 We started with design questions.
Who is our site’s customer? We tried to categorize by organization size (BigCos, startups, individuals) but this didn’t work. Roles worked better. So far we’re clustering geeks (engineers, technologists) and non-geeks (suits, product managers, designers).
Goals? What might these users want when they visit?
- Fix my stream. Technical help.
- Learn. How to, specs, why.
- Get. SDKs, code samples, books, t-shirts.
- Discuss. Specs evolution, issues, implementation.
- Promote my stream. Testimonials, leaderboard.
- Build tools. Extensions, validators.
Continue reading Notes from the ActivityStreams lunch
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Welcome to DataPortability's blog. Data portability increases people's power over their own data. While boosting data's business value. Use our PortabilityPolicy to share and promote data portability practices with others. Tweet us @DataPortability or follow #DPP.
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Mike Swift writes up the personal data space as a contest between individuals and large corporations. Swift interviewed Kaliya Hamlin of the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and PDEC members Reputation.com, Personal, and Singly. The Consortium doesn’t approach the challenge as a direct conflict. They see a realignment of behavior by people and enterprises producing new economic value for both, weaving a third way that creates, respects, and enforces personal control over personal data. 
Comments are closed 
Data Portability Wars : Google and Facebook vs. YOU
Well, here we go again.
The big companies love to embrace data portability and the freedom it provides its users, not to mention the press and goodwill that comes with it, as long as it doesn’t conflict with their corporate agenda.
Google and Facebook have both flirted with data portability and it was generally taken as a good sign when both hired leading open source/data portability advocates (Chris Messina and David Recordon respectively). Facebook’s APIs and social graph integration, as well as Google’s Takeout initiative, have been shining examples of the net result of this effort.
Still, despite these advances, both companies continue to “play” with your data – to your detriment. Back in February, Google removed an existing feature from its Android mobile phone operating system specifically to make it more difficult for users to integrate their Facebook contacts (Nexus S losing Facebook contacts sync as Google tightens data policy).
The latest salvo in this escalating war occurred while the US celebrated its Independence day holiday weekend: Facebook disabled a critical feature used to export your friends data (Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends). This appears to be a direct response to Google’s recent moves further into social networking: Google+ (Facebook blocks friend export tool in Google+ snub ).
The reality is that we gave both companies the right to monkey with our data. We accepted their terms of service when we joined their services and we continually agree when they make changes – for better or worse. And, while a few have left in protest, it is not practical to expect much more.
Let’s call it what it is: Facebook and Google both support “convenient” data portability — at all times convenient for them, *sometimes* convenient for you. And maybe that’s ok. After all, they are commercial enterprises answerable to boards and shareholders and subject to their leadership within.
I get it. Information is an asset, and why would anyone fiscally responsible intentionally dilute or give away an asset?
And therein is the conflict. Us versus them, my data versus their monetization of it.
This is complicated stuff. If Google and Facebook truly want to be the global purveyors of information that they purport to be, they’ll figure it out – or leave opportunity for the next company to come along and get it right. But the first thing they need to understand is that they cannot do it alone. When crafting global policy regarding user’s data they must include the user, otherwise they are simply more walled-gardens of varying heights.
So, before this thing spirals any further, let’s talk about it.
As Chairman of the International non-profit Data Portability organization, I hereby challenge Google, Facebook, and all other interested parties to sit down at a DATA PORTABILITY SUMMIT and figure it out together. Name the place, name the time – or your users will. Now is your chance to truly show leadership on a global scale. But know this: that coveted asset of information you possess exists solely because of your users. It’s ok to be capitalistic, and its good not to be evil, but it’s time to make data portability convenient for us all.
Interested in the DATA PORTABILITY SUMMIT? Let me know: steve@radwebtech.com
Steve Repetti
Chairman, DataPortability.org