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Is This What Data Portability Means?
Call me stupid but I thought when we speak of "Data Portability" we mean the ability to click a button that says Export on Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, etc. and then upload that data set to another network. We would be able to apply filters to the data (i.e. export only women 28-32, men with one cat, etc.).
Apparently I am wrong, at least from the point that Plaxo chief platform architect Joseph Smarr believes. Found via Valleywag, Smarr runs on 45RPM explaining how data portability works. You know Plaxo, they are the company that hired a world-famous video blogger to hack into Facebook and get data on the blogger's contacts. Check out the video for Smarr's definition of Data Portability below.
So help me out here, which definition is correct? If it's Smarr's then what good does it do if we need to actually interface into Facebook's system to grab the friends. I get the idea that if left in Facebook, the data will be up-to-date but if Facebook fails, then what? Maybe we need to create OpenFriend :)
I think what is happening here is the confusion of just what data portability is.
Portability is the ability to shift data from one place to another and not be tied to that particular system.
What Joseph is talking about is data sharing, and is completely different to portability. Selectively letting your contacts know where you are from site to site, or accessing a common address book to match your data against is not portability.
LinkedIn already has this were you can use your webmail address book to find new contacts - you don't shift this data to LinkedIn you simply use it as a reference point.