Google and Facebook Join the Data Portability Movement; Someone Get Marshall a Defrib Stat!

Marshall Kirkpatrick over at RWW has the lead on a major announcement by the DataPortability workgroup. To summarize the announcement, a Google representative and a Facebook representative will be joining the DataPortability group. 

Marshall notes, "If things go right, today could be a very important day in the history of the internet." I have checked in with Marshall and he is recovering nicely from the shock.

From the release, "The DataPortability Workgroup is, among other things, actively working to create the 'DataPortability Reference Design' to document the best practices for integrating existing open standards and protocols for maximum interoperability. This means users will be able to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems." 

The new representatives are: Google - Brad Fitzpatrick, Facebook - Benjamin Ling. Plaxo is also sending a representative, Joseph Smarr, to the table after breaking one of the "laws" of Facebook.

Here are the other members of the group: Chris Saad (Faraday Media), Stephen Kelly (Peepel), Ben Metcalfe (Consultant to Seesmic and Myspace), Chris Messina (Citizen Agency, Microformats), Daniela Barbosa (Dow Jones), Phil Morle, Ian Forrester (BBC), Kristopher Tate (Zooomr), Paul Keen (NineMSN), Brian Suda, Emily Chang (eHub), Danny Ayers (Talis), Robyn Tippins (Yahoo!), Robert Scoble (PodTech).

I'd love to get involved - how does someone from the east coast apply?