— Chris Saad

Archive
Tag "Dataportability"

An update on the data portability landscape

By: Chris Saad
18-12-2008
Dataportability, Technology, Work

I just posted a summary of the current data portability landscape to the Official DataPortability Blog.

From the post:

Closed platforms are like ice cubes in a glass of water. They will float for a while. They will change the temperature of the liquid
beneath. Ultimately, however, the ice cube must eventually melt into the wider web.

Facebook’s success with Facebook Connect can and will further drive innovation in the community to develop an open alternative.

Facebook’s success will (like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, AOL, Myspace, countless major media properties and countless small startups) to create alternatives. At least some of those participants will recognize (if they have not already) that the most open among them will earn both the respect and the market share of the next phase. Moving from Facebook Connect’s ‘data portability’ to Interoperable DataPortability.

A web of Data.

That’s a landscape where we can continue to innovate on a level playing field.

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The web-wide social network

By: Chris Saad
19-11-2008
Personal

Ross Dawson has an excellent summary of a Gartner presentation on the Distributed Social Web by David Cearley. A web where each participant is their own central node on a web-wide social network.

It is the only natural conclusion of the vision of Data Portability.

It will be made possible by a series of futurists, technologists, philanthropists and engineers developing core building blocks like OpenID, oAuth, APML, PortableContacts, XMPP, RSS/ATOM, OPML, Microformats and more.

It will be commercialized by a series of entrepreneurial start ups with stars in their eyes running in and around the feet of the giants who are each fighting each other to keep up. Startups like JS-Kit.

It will be fueled by traditional and not so traditional media companies, steered by young, idealistic intrapraneurs, who are willing to take a bet in order to stake their claim on the next generation of social networking and human communication.

It will be monetized by a recognition that one can’t monetize word-of-mouth. Instead Attention will emerge as the ultimate way to measure, discover and interact with participants. See Faraday Media.

It will be popularized by bloggers, smart IT journalists and conference organizers who understand the importance of open over closed.

We have already started to see a preview of the world to come via the early attempts at rudimentary aggregators and proprietary data portability implementations. This is just the beginning of the beginning.

For a more details around the emerging trends, check out Ross’ post.

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Facebook charging a protection fee?

By: Chris Saad
19-11-2008
Dataportability, Me, Technology, Work

According to CNet, Facebook is going to start charging app developers a fee to achieve ‘Verified Application’ status. The fee is optional, but that doesn’t matter. Apps that are not ‘verified’ will quickly get buried by those that are.

I think in hindsight people will recognize this move as one of the final death knels of the Facebook platform as we know it today.

First, they de-emphasized applications all together by relegating them to a ‘boxes’ page and making the stream their primary interaction metaphor (Read: FriendFeed clone). Now they are trying to lock down the platform further, raising the bar for participation and charging what amounts to a protection fee for app developers to get any real attention at all.

The fact of the matter is, an increasing number of people are finally realizing that Facebook looks very similar to Pre Internet networks, AOL, Passport/Hailstorm, and any other proprietary implementation of a platform that can and must be open.

The only platform that matters on the web is the web itself, and Facebook through its actions and inactions is helping us all learn this lesson faster than ever.

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Who owns your comment data?

By: Chris Saad
11-11-2008
Dataportability, Media, Work

We have started a conversation over on the JS-Kit blog about data ownership when it comes to comments. This is one of the Data Portability grey areas that needs a resolution in the ongoing journey to create the data web.

This is also an important question for social media. If we are all participants, who owns the space inside which we are particiapting?

I would love your input!

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Tim O'reilly talks about Data Portability

By: Chris Saad
07-11-2008
Dataportability, Media, Work

In this video, Tim O’reilly speaks about Data Portability. He suggests that it will be much like Open Source software in that it will never truly be adopted. I don’t know if I agree. 

Data Portability is less like Open Source software and more like the Internet and the Web itself. The standardized and interoperable protocals that make up the web – TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML etc – are adopted by anyone who wants access to Internet users. In much the same way, anyone who wants access to user data from the emerging web-wide data ecosystem will need to adopt emerging data portability formats and protocals.

Later in the video he goes on to say that data portabilty will actually be adopted, but not through legislation, but rather through organic mechanisms that gravitate towards open solutions that ‘just work’.

On this front, I agree. But Tim does not mention how we might help the process along. He does not mention that organic processes can and should include incentives. How the DataPortability project, through its definition of the problem and ongoing work to highlight good work towards an open data ecosystem actually encourages our collective desired outcomes.

Data Portability will indeed occur organically. The building blocks themselves were born out of organic efforts. An accellerant in the form of community, media and support documentation, however, has already helped push things along.

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Who is JS-Kit?

By: Chris Saad
14-10-2008
Business, Dataportability, Me, Personal, Work

The news today is that JS-Kit just closed a $3.6m round of funding and I have joined the company as a Strategic Advisor.

I’d like to take this moment to explain who JS-Kit is, what it could be, and why I decided to get involved.

First, I get offered a lot of advisory roles or full time jobs. It’s always very tempting to help entrepreneurs pursuing their dreams.

The reality is, however, between my company Faraday Media, my work at the DataPortability project, APML Workgroup, Media 2.0 Workgroup and other projects there simply isn’t enough bandwidth left to give the attention required.

The JS-Kit opportunity is different. When I first met Khris Loux (The CEO of JS-Kit) it was clear very quickly that we had a unique connection and a shared vision for a distributed Personal Web. As a result I have broken my own rule and accepted the offer to consult with/advise the company on a formal basis. It will be a significant commitment and take up a large part of my time.

The company he has quietly built over the last 2 years reflects our shared vision and its success is unmatched in the marketplace. With more than 550,000 registered sites, JS-Kit is the largest provider of light-weight plug in social features on the web. More importantly, though, it has no destination site. A philosophical choice that allows it to execute on a strategy of powering the edge to get more social – and more personal – without siphoning traffic back to a proprietary center.

JS-Kit technology powers some of the biggest sites on the web – with more to be announced soon.

This combination of scale and a focus on the edge makes the company uniquely placed to build something very special.

There are a number of challenges ahead for the company though – challenges of which Khris and the team are all too aware.

The name is not great! It was the name of a prototype product that became very successful very quickly despite not being ready for prime time so it sorta stuck. Blame Nick Gonzalez for writing it up in Techcrunch only days after it was put live for preliminary testing (just kidding I love Nick in a manly platonic sort of way)

Adoption is easy, but customization (it’s possible to make the widgets unrecognizable from the default style) is far too hard to do for average users.

The design is Web 1.0 at best. The site, brand and products lack a cohesive visual language and a modern look and feel.

These are just some of the things I will be helping to change over the coming months. The funding round also allows the team to execute on these opportunities quickly. These changes will be a precursor to a much broader strategy that we hope will delight users, empower publishers and surprise the industry.

In the mean time though, Faraday Media is still very much alive and kicking with both my involvement and the involvement of my best friend and co-founder Ashley Angell. I believe the core technologies developed in its labs will change the web. Faraday Media and JS-Kit will continue their business development activities and my role will help to shepherd the process.

So too is the DataPortability project under the stewardship of the stellar new steering group lead by none other than Daniela Barbosa.

So in this time of Economic woes, failing companies, staff layoffs and uncertain times I am proud and honored to be part of a team that is continuing to have a sustainable and positive impact on the web and actually growing the opportunity for a distributed personal ecosystem.

So now I’m involved, I’d like to encourage you to try out the tools on your sites and blogs and send me feedback directly. I’d like to start a conversation with you to improve the company and the web together.

Also follow Me, Khris and Nancy on Twitter!

 

Coverage has already started

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DataPortability is boring?

By: Chris Saad
29-09-2008
Dataportability, Media, Technology, Work

Drama 2.0 has made a guest post on Mashable suggesting that DataPortability is boring. I obviously disagree.

Let me address each of his main points one by one.

(1) The average Internet user probably isn’t an active member of dozens of Web 2.0 services. While this may be difficult for some to believe, the truth is that most people don’t feel compelled to sign up for every new Web 2.0 service that launches. And quite frequently, users sign up for services that they eventually end up using very little. Data portability seems a lot less compelling when one recognizes that many, if not most, mainstream Internet users aren’t actively investing their time equally across a wide range of Web 2.0 services.

Actually you’re wrong. Data Portability is not about ‘Web 2.0′ – it’s about any web-based service. A typical user might use CNN, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, AIM, their cell phone and their PC or Laptop. That’s a lot of apps. Imagine the possibilities of having them sync some aspects of your data.

(2) The average Internet user probably doesn’t need or want to take his friends along to every Web 2.0 service he or she signs up for. These services can be fun and entertaining, but the notion that every user wants to be able to import his data when signing up for a new one is asinine.

Really? I remember the same argument against Telephones, PCs and Cell phones. It’s only asinine if you have a failure of imagination.

The point is not what users do today, but rather what new applications and innovation are possible in a standards based data ecosystem.

(3) Privacy is just as important as openness. Where does my data end and yours begin? If you believe that users of Web 2.0 services have some inherent “right” to control their own data but that this data is in inexorably linked to the “social graph,” what “rights” do users have to control where “shared” data goes?

Openness is the wrong word. The DataPortability project does not refer to the ‘Open Web’ for a reason.

Privacy is also the wrong word. Privacy is too broad a term that has no actionable attributes. We need to focus on words that represent features for implementation. Features that allow Access controls and permissioning for example.

As for shared or derived data, the lines are being drawn and the issues are being debated. Just because it’s hard to work out doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.

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Speaking at Social Media

By: Chris Saad
24-09-2008
Me, Work

 

Speaking at Social Media

Speaking at Social Media

Join me there! Using the code “zaph” will get you half price off ($495).

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The mythical value of data lockin

By: Chris Saad
04-09-2008
Dataportability, Personal, Technology, Work

When talking to people about Data Portability there is a couple of questions that always gets asked first.

 

Why would a vendor allow users to leave their service?

 

Why make it easy for users to take the preacious data you have about them and use it on other sites?

or…

What is the business justification for letting data walk out the door?

 

You spent a lot of time and energy to get users to sign up and give up their data right?

My answer always consists of a number of parts. There are a number of reasons why vendors should get involved in an open ecosystem of data interchange. User respect, reduced barrier to entry, reduced network fatigue and more.

Today, however, I’d like to focus on one particular reason why the value of Data Lockin is a myth.

Here is a diagram that represents the data you have about your user. 100%. Awesome right? You have a complete view of the proprietary data you have managed to collect about your user.

100% of your proprietary data

Have you ever considered, however, that your user’s data actually looks like this?

Your User's Data

Your User's Complete Data Set

Even if you are Google, and you know every search your users do, every document they write, every chat they have – you still don’t know their facebook social graph. You don’t know their tweet stream. You don’t know the books they bought on Amazon.

Your view of your user’s data pales in comparisson to their complete data set.

Not to mention the data you think you have is out-of-date weeks after you aquire it. Interests change, friends come and go, projects, assignments and jobs change and much, much more.

Rapid Expiration of Data

Rapid Expiration of Data

So, Data Portability is not about letting your users ‘walk out’ of your service. Data Portability is about enabling, empowering and encouraging your users to bring all their data with them, to connect your data to the rest of their data ecosystem and to continue to refresh and maintain the data on an ongoing basis.

The value of Data Lockin is a myth. Data Portability is an opportunity to have true visibility into a user’s friends, interests, content and comments.

Are you thinking about joining the data web?

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Using email as OpenID

By: Chris Saad
22-08-2008
Dataportability, Technology

One of the most common comments/questions I get while talking about data portability is ‘The OpenID User Experience sucks – how do we make it more user friendly?’.

The problem is two fold. First, users do not understand why they need to provide a URI to log in. Second, users get confused by bouncing around to a 3rd party site.

I’ve given a lot of thought to this problem.

The only answer I’ve had so far is that while the OpenID user experience is difficult to explain to users who expect an email address and password log in, the data portability value proposition may help justify the added cognitive load for users and vendors.

It’s probably true – but it’s not a good enough answer.

More recently I’ve been thinking about another potential solution.

I believe the 3rd party site bounce is actually becoming common place. Passport, Facebook, Google use it and, as such, users are becoming more comfortable with it.

The question of using a URI as a ‘username’ however, is a more difficult pattern to explain to users at a login screen.

Mapping email addresses to OpenIDs

The purists among us will argue that identity should not be tied to messaging. That is, uniquely identifying people by email address is a bad idea. It encourages spam and other unhealthy activity.

Putting that aside for a moment, however, imagine this.

Rather than asking for a user’s OpenID, ask them for their email address:

chris.saad@gmail.com

Now imagine the application refactoring the address on the fly to something like this:

http://gmail.com/chris.saad

The point here is that we take everything before the @ and place it after a slash. Remove the @ and put HTTP:// at the start and you end up with a well formed URI.

Now imagine that Gmail provided OpenID functionality for each email account in this way.

There are a number of challenges to pulling this off. Not the least of which is getting major email providers to support OpenID, and get existing OpenID consumers to refactor email addresses (if provided) on the fly.

It’s certainly worth thinking about though.

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