Who owns your social data?
I just returned from the 3rd annual Avenue A | Razorfish Technology Summit in Austin. After sitting through presentations from Microsoft, Sun, Forrester Research, and Avenue A | Razorfish experts including Ray Velez, Amy Vickers, and Shiv Singh, there was one recurring theme that stood out: openness. Everyone seemed to be talking about openness: open standards, open source, open policies. But how open really are these companies? And how far are users willing to go?
While everyone at the conference agreed on the value of open source as a development concept, the most contentious issue centered on the openness of user data in a web 2.0 world. With the recent broohaha over tech cognoscente Robert Scoble’s ban (and subsequent reinstatement) from Facebook for “scraping” user data of his “social graph” (a word I learned means “all your connections on a social networking site”) via a rogue Plaxo script, the debate is quickly moving from the academic to the business domain. This will be a hot topic in the months to come.
The first related topic was Open ID. OpenID is an open, decentralized, free single sign-on system. Think of Microsoft Passport (I mean, Windows Live ID) but for a wide array of unaffiliated sites. Open ID eases that frustrating burden of having to remember a million user names and passwords for that increasingly complex ecosystem of sites you visit. With the proliferation of social media sites, there’s a lot of buzz about universal standards. Once you register with Open ID, you log on to all your favorite OpenID-supported sites/services with a single password linked to a provider of your choice (e.g., your existing Yahoo! log-in). Best of all, the user ID stays with you even if you switch providers.
The second related topic at the conference was data portability. Data portability is the idea of taking user data between different social networking sites. On day one of the AA|RF Technology Conference, Microsoft announced it was joining the Data Portability Workgroup, a consortium dedicated to defining inter-operability standards for data portability between sites. In doing so, Microsoft joins Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Google, Plaxo, & others. The open standards will “allow users to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems,” reports TechCrunch.
Until days ago, Facebook stayed out of the circle. Why? Its business is based on owning your identity. Ever read its Terms of Service? Apparently, Facebook has the right to all your content for “any purpose, commercial, advertising or otherwise.” But, users shouldn’t have to read the fine print. And, they shouldn’t have to re-create their profiles and chart their complex social graphs next time the new hot social media site comes along. (You know how many hours it took to try to make myself look cool??!:-)
Microsoft agrees. Sr Technical Product Manager at Microsoft, Angus Logan, explained to AA|RF employees & clients that Microsoft will follow the “delegation” style of data portability. Translation: Windows Live tools will allow users to import their circle of friends and photos from other social media sites.
More details to come on this topic throughout 2008. Facebook’s recent reversals of its creepy Beacon ad product, Robert Scoble ban, and refusal to join the Data Portability consortium are steps in the right direction.
With the right security and privacy permissions in place, openID and data portability encapsulate two cornerstones of web 2.0: simplicity and user control.
As social media tools are increasingly adopted in the workplace, issues related to social identity will soon cross paths with the enterprise. Executives, be ready. Who do you think owns social data?
