14 comments

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  Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

  1 year ago

  Standing ovation from me!
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  Mario Olckers

  1 year ago

  This DP nonsense is the emperor's clothes of the web 2.0 world.
  
  When e.g. Scoble wants to go wherever, I dont want him to take any of my e.g. facebook stuff with him: pics, wall posts, email, DOB etc. What does he own, what is 'mine'?
  
  How is this gonna work in practice? Open APIs? I dont see it?
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  Will

  1 year ago

  I'd say that it depends on the service. If I'm using an online solution to track my finances, or manage my businesses project timelines, then I need the security of portable data. If the service were to disappear one day, I would need to be able to replace it.
  
  Social sites are a reflection of something that I already own. As I encourage friends to join and build out a network, the online persona starts to look more like the reality. Making that data portable would make it easier for me to jump ship and move to a new service, but nothing would be irreparably lost if I had to start again somewhere new.
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  Peter

  1 year ago

  data portability matters to a lot more people than these few raving ego-maniacal lunatics. the difference is, these lunatics only care about it because they think it'll help them make money; other people care about it because it could potentially help society.
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  Elias Bizannes

  1 year ago

  Dataportability does not mean you can export all your data out of facebook; it means access to that data from other places. Its more akin to being able to send an email from hotmail accounts to gmail accounts - interropability between different systems is something that's a win for everyone.
  
  The Gilmor gang are leading industry thinkers. Only Saad has has even come remotely close to participating in the DataPortability projects policy issues, and even then its been passive. Having said that though watching the discussion has been valuable to us working on the DataPortability project. We need more discussion, and an industry wide conversation, as this is something that affects us all. So I'm glad they are helping bring this conversation to the forefront because it shows how complicated the issues truly are.
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  Aaron Huslage

  1 year ago

  This is a discussion about protocols. The only difference between talking about "data portability" and email is that SMTP was designed by some geeks in a back room and this one is being designed by some geeks with loud mouths.
  
  The truth of the matter is that they want this "ecosystem" to thrive outside of just Facebook, et al. They want social networking features everywhere because they think that it will make money. But it is truly only an echo chamber thusfar and the users just don't care.
  
  The fact still remains that no one has yet made a dime on any of this except the founders of these companies and they aren't likely to any time soon. Protocols are all nice, but until there is a true financial incentive for companies to implement them they are only specifications.
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  Matt

  1 year ago

  OpenID is the pin that will pop this bubble.
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  David Evans

  1 year ago

  True data portability will not kill social network sites. We need something like root DNS servers to store distributed versions of our data that we control, and give social networks access to. Current DP initiatives are starting off in the right direction but we have a long way to go. Certain people have been talking about this for years and while I disagree with much of what's been said recently, at least the conversation has been amplified to the point where the digerati are finally beginning to grok the fundamental underlying issues.
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  Bob

  1 year ago

  I'm glad to see SOMEONE talking to some sense here...
  
  All these people raving have money and influence. If they're dissatisfied with what's out, they can start their own bloody social network.
  
  Seriously, no one's holding a gun to anyone's head and making them use Facebook. Don't like, go somewhere else and stop your crying.
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  Elias Bizannes

  1 year ago

  Whoops - just correcting the above as I was writing my comment on my phone when it got posted! When I said Saad has been passive (which he's not - he's one of the most active participants in the DataPortability Project in every sense), I meant the discussions within the policy group have been very dispersed with no clear consensus. Passive in the sense of the group, in that it hasn't been as active as the others like the technical group (and clearly it should - as this is more a policy issue than a technical issue which to date is what we have focused on). If Chris was any more active, he'd have a heart-attack.
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  scottgjerdingen

  1 year ago

  it appears to me, what is being critiqued is insight into a thought process. it is this process, that as painful as it is, that leads to further defining the problem and may even solve it.
  
  i believe we should cherish this insight and not ridicule it....comments above and this post included :-)
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  MyMesh.com

  1 year ago

  Elias absolutely correct, it's much more than a technical issue. In fact, it's a political issue, driven by economic values, which also change from time to time, /ac.
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  Jamie

  1 year ago

  finally somebody who understands that "I want my data" is a comment that has left me tearing my hair out whilst listening to the Gillmor Gang.
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  Racing School

  7 months ago

  This is amazing. It's like making a common standard for the Web 2.0 platform. If I understand it correctly, it's a little like you can swop Telcos and still keep your current Mobile number. This is awesome!
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