No Need To Be Cranky About Data Portability
May 14th, 2008 by adminby Lau-RANT
I get why Charlie Odonnell is terminally cranky about the data portability issue. (I was going to write, “I grok”, but my wife tells me only people who were frying on acid reading Stranger in a Strange Land say that, so…).
To give some context: there’s an industry effort under way to create open standards and allow your and my data to move from one site or application to the next.
Charlie says: who cares? If a site or app is useful, I’ll use it, and don’t care if my data ports or not. Why would you want to move your scintillating pictures of Bob mooning the frat house from Facebook to Flickr anyway?
Sorry Charlie: because lots of people would. They’d love to move their contact list or page content to the happening new site. Why wouldn’t they? It’s a way for the other site to attract people. And the originating site should get on the band wagon because it will be a competitive advantage to offer portability based on OpenID or whatever the heck else. That’s the part I don’t care about.
And also because of exactly the reasons you mention, Charlie: laziness. Having to create an account every time something else pops up? Give me a break. Use my Yahoo or Gmail login furcrhissakes.
I’m not as concerned about privacy. Vauhini Vara’s article in the WSJ about using the Web to spy on your friends doesn’t send shivers down my spine, good people of the blogosphere. The Web is a vast exercise in exhibitionism and voyeurism. If that boggles your mind, or you feel inclined to huff and puff at the inanity of it all, just read Sapolsky’s “A Primate’s Memoir”, and get a refresher course on your own behavior. And on what makes social networking ventures successful.
Also, if you don’t like it, don’t play.
So: data portability standards are not boring. They’re good. They’re useful. And I don’t really care what they are as long as they’re there.
Tags: data portability, open standards, openID
