Heyy,

So i’ve been reading alot recently about data portability, in particular Googles Opensocial plans, plans that involve facebook….but facebook currently wants nothing to do with it. Why?

Data portability when it occurs on a large scale, will be a paradigm shift, one that i see being pivotal in the future direction of the social web.

Lets have it from both sides…

Google/Open social
Ok, so Google wants to do the honorable thing by opening up all the social network(s) data so that users can easily transport their personal data into other social networks or Applications.
It has been the next ‘big step’ in social media for a wee while now, the problem was always getting the right social networks on board. Google thought it had this problem covered 3 weeks ago when facebook agreed to come on board. That came unstuck 3-4 days later when Mr Zuckerberg decided facebook was opting out.

facebook
The question for facebook here is, what is our business? Its simple, facebooks business is information. The platform they own allows millions of people around the world to create/trade/share/discuss information with their friends. So what happens if you allow that information to be freely moved around the internet, away from facebook? Would facebook be losing eyeballs or creating new ones?

Its not an easy answer, one that i and facebook execs (im guessing) are currently trying to figure out.

heres the 200 words or less version of my answer to date….

if facebook decides to push ahead without the use of opensocial and create their own data portability ring, users will either ditch facebook because they cant transport their data to places opensocial can, or stick vehemently with facebook as it is where the bulk of their personal data is stored and see it to be too hard to recreate that data with google and opensocial.

So the power is with the user (as it should be). If a majority of users stick with facebook after they announce plans to manage their own data portability, facebook wins in a big way. In a big way i mean ‘the next google’.
facebook still wins if they decide to join opensocial, but they will, from that point on, forever be under the google umbrella…..and i dont think Mark Zuckerberg likes umbrellas.