Google, Facebook and Plaxo join Dataportability.org

Great news from our expanding Dataportability.org group with Joseph Smarr (Plaxo), Brad Fitzpatrick (Google) and Benjamin Ling (Facebook) joining the DataPortability Workgroup.

There’s been a whole lot of press about it, who can all write better than me, so here is a collection of some of the more interesting commentary that I’ve seen:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/08/this-day-will-be-remembered-facebook-google-and-plaxo-join-the-dataportability-workgroup
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/goog-fb-data.php
http://www.sixapart.com/about/news/2008/01/looking_through.html

So why is significant? Firstly, these people are not just individuals but actually representing their respective companies. Secondly, two of the larger consumer service companies are embracing open standards that will allow others to innovate and interoperate with one another (unlike the wall-gardened approach currently seen by the social networks).

Yes, there are privacy concerns and a very considered approach needs to be taken before the press repurpose fact for page impressions and scare consumers about what is really been shared.

No doubt some of the other large tech companies are either actively pursuing this, or at the very least, closely monitoring the group but we’ll just enjoy this press release for now.

** On a personal note, big congratulations should go out to Chris Saad and Faraday Media. It’s quite an achievement for a small company based in Australia to get these heavy weights to sit up and take notice. Just by seeing how much he hassles me to do something shows me how much work goes on in the background to kick these things off.