Data Portability

There is one popular social media site I have never used, never registered with: Digg. I always felt complacent to vote on stories, never really got it. Well, that was true for Twitter as well until I used it more often. However I am a sucker for every application that is featuring open standards and today’s announcement from Digg actually made me join it and maybe I will use it regularly.

Digg is already featuring hCards on profile pages as well as MicroID. Implementation of MicroID happened pretty much unnoticed by everyone it seems. But yes, it’s there.

Now Digg also wants to support OpenID. It wanted to join this growing standard one year ago already but nothing happened. It’s unclear if it will become a provider, a relying party, or both. Don’t ask me why, but I think it will be both. Just a feeling, no info here.

Also Digg will add other open standards like APML, OAuth, and XFN. I am curious if, what, when, and how all this will be realized and implemented. Oh, Digg has joined that working group everyone else has joined the last couple of weeks as well.

Listening to more podcasts today. This one is called The Data Portability Circus. It is already three weeks old but I never got around to actually listen to it. It is featuring Larry Halff of Ma.gnolia, Chris Messina, and Tara Hunt. My favourite quote is right in the beginning by Tara regarding the Facebook/Plaxo/Scoble case:

…Facebook banning a specific member of high stature…

I like that!

It is Sunday, about noon, and I eventually find some time to listen to two very interesting podcasts/videos regarding my favourite topics at the moment: OpenID and data portability.

First, there is Chris Messina’s already famous video, The Existential DiSo Interview, where he interviews himself about DiSo and its possibilities (read more about DiSo here). DiSo is one of the projects where people seem to actually work on things. So it’s cool to hear that Chris and friends want to have a demo available at SXBW in March already. The demo should allow importing friends, share data with them on a remote site, and sending an activity stream back to where the user originally came from. Let’s see if they can manage to do that. Surely some self-imposed pressure.
Also please notice that cool Eboy poster in the background; it’s also hanging on the wall above my monitor. Good choice.

The Existential DiSo Interview from Chris Messina on Vimeo.

Next is an interview conducted by Phil Windley with Scott Kveton for IT Conversations. It’s a very long interview - 55 minutes - spanning topics from OpenID, of course, to data portability, Scott’s new employer MyStrands, OpenIDDevCamp, and also the forthcoming Social Graph Foo Camp.

I recommend both interviews to everyone who is interested in data portability and OpenID. Both cover a lot of topics, often in much detail, explaining the core concepts. I think they are even accessible to people who have not heard or read much about the topics.

There aren’t many facts to foster this assumption but I strongly believe that APML will be a crucial format in commerce within the next few years. Amazon’s recommendations should give you a hint of what’s to be expected. You know their slogan: “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” already.

Actually that’s what APML is all about. Just imagine if Amazon and Last.fm supported it: You could import your APML file from Amazon to Last.fm and listened to a customized radio station based on your CD purchases from Amazon. On the other hand you could import your Last.fm file and got recommendations of CDs you could buy from Amazon.

If you want to get a glimpse of what’s to be expected have a look at TasteBroker. Enter your Last.fm, Pandora or del.icio.us username and see what’s possible already. TasteBroker is an experimental project by Sun’s Paul Lamere.

[via notizBlog]