The Gillmor Gang, a podcast with some of the leading voices of ‘the social web’ talked about data portability in an ‘epic’ episode with internet heavyweights like Mike Arrington and Robert Scoble. Data portability is the idea of having your data of your ’social profile’ - your friends or any other information tied to a specific network such as linkedIn - being transferred to another network such as Second Life. (Each link links to their own vision on data portability).
One of the main issues on the podcast is who owns the information on the network, and what is the ‘contract’ between the owner, and provider of the information? Who owns your profile, and the data you send into the network - not so much in the sense of object creation like Second Life - but your friendslist, or behaviour such as locations visited etc. This gets a real issue as discussed in the podcast when applications are going to allow users to share this information between networks, having friends lists, email addresses, and other linked data imported in a different type of network.
An interesting discussion that has found it’s way to Second Life trough Tako Takashi (mrtop.de) who came to a conclusion I can only agree with - the ownership of data is not going to get you very far, but the agreement of usage of this data should be defined and remain unchallenged throughout the networks. This means you can create either opt-in or opt out towards sharing information, and create a clear agreement of what data can and will be used between networks, and what data remains private at all times.
I can recommend both the podcast and the Second Life transcript (linked above) if these issues are of interest to you, they shine some light over an ongoing struggle by the 900 pound gorilla’s Facebook, Microsoft and Google, each going after the one portal that holds these digital profiles, and their ‘rulesets’, which at some point inevitably will reach virtual worlds if we are to believe Prometeus.
Posted on: May 19, 2008 | Share on:
Abhishek Saxena on 
Sophie on 
Rick van der Wal
said on May 22nd
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd347=x-347-559597
Privacy Report from all over the world
Igor The Troll
said on May 25th
You forgot the third parties. like governments and ISPs.
They are listing to your Data!