We’ve been writing a lot about data portability here lately, and specifically the DataPortability.org Work Group. High level members of Google and Facebook staff joined the group a week ago yesterday, key people from LinkedIn, SixApart, Flickr and Twitter joined two days after that, the new Mozilla CEO told us last night that his organization is looking closely and will likely join the group.
That’s all well and good but when does the rubber hit the road? Where’s the beef and what are we waiting for?
Though it’s only been a week since Google and Facebook staff joined the organization, there’s been some key progress made this morning in explaining the aims of the movement. Whereas parts of Data Portability (like OpenID) have been plagued with foggy evangelistic efforts for years, check out the following video explaining the concepts. This strikingly well-produced work was made independently by screencaster Michael Pick of Smashcut Media.
DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix
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I’m really impressed. The past week may have been more talk and hype than anything else – but talk plays an important roll in building pressure for change. Major vendors have come to the table, now advocates of change everywhere have one more useful tool in this video to make sure that the public doesn’t forget about the conversation that’s begun.
Though it appears that Data Portability has a long road ahead of it and that major vendors are unlikely to open up access to their users’ data, in fact openness has some important competitive advantages. The open and integrated vendor has far greater network effect and scale of access to data for their own purposes than the data hording vendor. The biggest challenge may be building a new social contract to protect customer privacy and control in this exciting new era of portability and personalization. You can join that conversation at DataPortability.org and elsewhere.
Michael Pick has chosen the easy-on-the eyes player from Vimeo to embed his video, the code to repost the video elsewhere is available with just a click or two from inside the player here.
