Comments for Microsoft Joining DataPortability.org

Microsoft Joining DataPortability.org

2008-01-23T14:40:53Z

Chris Saad, Chairman of the Data Portability Working Group, confirmed to me this morning that Microsoft's David Treadwell, a VP at Windows Live, will be joining the organization. Microsoft is expected to make a formal announcement in the coming days. News first leaked out via a shadowy post at Computerworld this morning.

The Working Group aims to foster standard protocols for users to port their identities, friends and digital assets from one site online to another, as they see fit. See the explanatory video at the end of this post for another explanation of the general concepts. Still another good explanation can be found in John Battelle's excellent post earlier this month on how companies should compete on quality of service more than data lock-in.

]]> The group made headlines earlier this month when key individuals from Google and Facebook joined. We at ReadWriteWeb believe that data portability will be one of the defining issues of 2008 and included resources concerning the subject in our 2008 Toolkit.

Microsoft's joining the group is an event of sufficiently complex historical meaning that I'm hesitant to try and interpret it here. Microsoft has both been the ultimate example of lock-in and also an important force behind other open standards efforts on the web, including OpenID. Though no fan of Microsoft, I am consistently excited about what the Live team in particular does. I'll look for analysis of this and future news about implementation at Live from my favorite source on the topic, LiveSide.

Where's the beef so far?

One of the most frequent criticisms the working group has faced in its short history is that it is all talk and no action. I asked founder and Chairman Chris Saad about this critique and he said the following:
"There's tonnes of beef - all the [contributing] standards groups have done excellent work already. We're just helping the mainstream catch up."

Saad also pointed to the group's timeline, titled A list of significant events leading to a Data Portability enabled Internet.

You can expect a lot more discussion and news to come from these quarters in the coming months.

DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

Comment from Todd on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T15:02:26Z

WARNING! WARNING! Danger Will Robinson! Danger! Anyone care to remember what they tried to do to OpenDocument?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML#Criticism

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T15:08:24Z

Thanks for that link, Todd. It's a real complicated situation and as with any of these giant vendors - their likelihood to sabotage things is weighed against the desirability of their adoption. Plus I'm sure they've got important contributions to make too, but yeah...point taken.

Comment from Baher on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T16:04:34Z

It's a great win for DataPortability group, we're already in the first month and this year seems to be great for web standards (OpenID and DataPortability).

But It's interesting that Microsoft would join this group despite its previous behavior towards such initiatives, could it be a change in Microsoft’s policy towards the web? Or maybe they’re just following the lead of Google and Facebook.

I wrote about it on my blog http://technozzle.com/?p=57

Comment from mr obvious on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T18:32:49Z

what a joke. ms tries its best to lock in formats and everything it can including code, formats and what not.

and they are part of this. non sense. this is not going any where and people who think its going to make a difference are wasting their time. dont you have kids, family, grand kids to take care off rather than wasting you time.

go get a life.

Comment from computer user on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T18:35:23Z

data portability will drive microsoft, google and yahoo out of business.

if you know how to wear your pants, you should know this is bull shit. i hope you know what bull shit is, as well.

Comment from vibrokatana on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T20:19:28Z

They probably want to extend and destroy.
http://www.spymac.com/details/?2334927

Comment from Chris Saad on 2008-01-23

2008-01-23T23:21:05Z

In answer to the "Where's the beef' question I have written a post about it here:

http://chrissaad.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/microsoft-to-join-dataportability-wheres-the-beef/

Comment from Charlie on 2008-01-23

2008-01-24T00:06:27Z

It would be great to see Microsoft support the concept of data portability with its actions. I had a bad experience with them just a couple days ago:

I am helping my Grandma right now move from WebTV to her first computer. WebTV was bought by Microsoft, so it’s now MSN TV. Grandma has been using this service for at least 8 years now, and she has a lot of important stuff in her email folders that she’d like to move to her new service.

I called MSN support and asked (nicely) how we could transfer all that data - her data - over. The response was a simple, “you can’t do that”.

An incredible exchange followed, going something like this:

Me: “I can’t do that? Why not?”

MSN Rep: “because there’s no way to do it”

Me: “Well shouldn’t there be? It’s her data!”

MSN Rep: “Well we don’t have a way to do that”

Me: “Have other people called with questions like this?”

MSN Rep: “Yes, quite a few”

Me: “And what do you tell them?”

MSN Rep: “We tell them there’s no way to do it”

Me: “Well that sounds like a problem doesn’t it? How are you addressing it?”

MSN Rep: (I don’t remember how she answered this point, but it was very much in the spirit of, “we’re not”)

Me: “Ok let me ask… is webtv’s email stored on the box or on your servers?”

MSN Rep: “It’s kept on our servers”

Me: “Alright, is there an open protocol your servers support, like IMAP or POP, to access webtv email on the servers?”

MSN Rep: “No”

It was very frustrating, though she did assure me that the data would be there just as long as we kept on paying for the service.

Comment from Unimpressed on 2008-01-23

2008-01-24T02:46:27Z

Nice to see that the DP Workgroup been willing to fix and fixed up a number of major deficiencies (as perceived from the dataportability.org portal.)

Most notable was replacing the "sharing is caring" slogan, more obvious Join links, and getting rid of the elite heros on the bottom of front page. These changes are respectable.
Good job and best of luck.

About Microsoft joining, good and great, but nothing to be really impressed with. That said, the commenter has been a long time Microsoft lover; they've made tremendous contributions to computing as we know it today. That said, the world is changing, which is also good, and great.