Top 3 Privacy issues for DataPortability on Social Networks.

I was asked some questions by Ouriel Ohayon to help with his upcoming presentation at Tel Aviv University. I thought I would share my answers here as well.

He asked me what I thought were the top 3 concerns for Privacy on Social Networks in a DataPortability enabled world

My answers…

1. Perception: Privacy Concerns are somewhat over-exaggerated - just like with any new system/approach. If I email you, you get my email address. Why wouldn’t the same thing happen if I ‘friend’ you on a social network. The question is not if Robert Scoble had a right to get the data and the data of his friends - the question is why Facebook won’t let him.

   Update: I forgot to mention here that if email addresses and spam are the issue - then moving away from email addresses as a means for uniquely identifying users should help solve the issue. As Chris Messina says, we should be using OpenID instead of Email addresses for login and uniqueness checks.
   

2. Control: “Privacy” is just a subset of a broader issue of “Control”. Facebook and others can give lots of Privacy but ultimately give very little Control. A whole set of other Control features are needed including DataPortability support. Facebook and others like to pretend they are protecting users - but actually they are just protecting their business model. Open will always win though.
3. Language: Privacy is a very poor, out-dated word. In a social world privacy is less of a concern than complexity and information overload. We need to move onto more practical words such as permissions and trust. Words that let users act.

Individuals from Plaxo, Google and Facebook join DataPortability.org Workgroup.

We are proud to announce the inclusion of Joseph Smarr (Plaxo), Brad Fitzpatrick (Google) and Benjamin Ling (Facebook) to the DataPortability Workgroup.

Plaxo, Google and Facebook together represent the key players in the competing approaches to Social Networking platforms and Data Portability.

Their joint support of the DataPortability initiative presents a new opportunity for the next generation of software - particularly in the fields of social software, user rights and interoperability.

The DataPortability Workgroup is, among other things, actively working to create the ‘DataPortability Reference Design’ to document the best practices for integrating existing open standards and protocols for maximum interoperability.

This means users will be able to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems.

We look forward to their contribution to the conversation.

More about the DataPortability initiative:

Our Philosophy: As users, our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by, and shared between our chosen tools or vendors. We need a DHCP for Identity. A distributed File System for data. The technologies already exist, we simply need a complete reference design to put the pieces together.

Our Mission: To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. And, to promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community.

Besides these new additions, the WorkGroup includes, among others, Chris Saad (Faraday Media), Stephen Kelly (Peepel), Ben Metcalfe (Consultant to Seesmic and Myspace), Chris Messina (Citizen Agency, Microformats), Daniela Barbosa (Dow Jones), Phil Morle, Ian Forrester (BBC), Kristopher Tate (Zooomr), Paul Keen (NineMSN), Brian Suda, Emily Chang (eHub), Danny Ayers (Talis), Robyn Tippins (Yahoo!), Robert Scoble (PodTech).

For more information:

Please visit the DataPortability site.

Read/Write Web Coverage

Techcrunch Coverage

Dataportability Soon at a Cinema Near You - VIDEO.

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

This amazing video was lovingly hand-crafted by Michael Pick, from Smashcut Media, to outline and demonstrate what Data Portability is all about. If you’ve been under a rock and haven’t heard of the Data Portability Workgroup, this ought to catch you up real quick.

It’s amazing work. Thank-you for your great work Michael.

Dissolution of Social Networks - AUDIO.

My lovely wife (who is an Economics and Business teacher coincidentally) sent me a Podcast today which really blew me away. It’s an interview with Andreas Kluth (San Francisco correspondent for The Economist) talking about real and virtual campfires, and predicts the dissolution of standalone social networks as we know them.

Anyone interested in the next generation of internet technology really needs to listen to this podcast. Its clear, concise and really gets at the heart of many social graph issues and human behavior.

VIDEO PROJECT - Share your thoughts about DataPortability.

Time to continue the conversation about DataPortability… this time using video.

We want to hear your thoughts about DataPortability recorded as a short video. We hope to share these videos individually as well as compile them into a single video to help the community understand expectations, goals and themes that are emerging in the discussion.

Here are the questions we’d like you to answer.

• What does DataPortability mean to you?

• How do you imagine DataPortability might change the way you use the web?
• How would you explain the value of DataPortability to Vendors - those that store the data.
• How would you explain the value of DataPortability to Users - those that create and own the data.
• Ideally, what would you like to see from the DataPortability Project in the next 12 months? 24 months?
• What else would you like to say? Make up a question and answer it!
• Finally, if you agree with the sentiment, please say “My name is [your name] and I want Data Portability” at the end of your video.

If you can, please try to limit the video to a maximum of 5 minutes.

We’d like to compile these for February 20th. Please make sure you get your video in before then!

To submit the video, post it to one of the video sharing sites and tag it ‘DataPortabilityAndMe’

I look forward to seeing what the community has to say.

Special thanks to Daniela Barbosa, Chris Messina and the Evangelism Action Group for this idea!

VIDEO - DataPortability Meetup in San Francisco.

DataPortability San Francisco Meetup Feb 7th 2008 from dataportability on Vimeo.

VIDEO - Some DataPortability and Me videos.

A number of DataPortabilityAndMe videos have been released already - have you made yours?

VIDEO - DataPortabilityAndMe - Chris Saad Responds.

As part of the ongoing DataPortabilityAndMe conversation, I have posted my series of videos answering the questions posed… here they are!

What does DataPortability mean to me?

How will DataPortability change the way I use the web?

How would you explain the value of DataPortability to Vendors?

How would you explain the value of DataPortability to End-users?

What would you like to see from the DataPortability Project in the next 12-24 months?

I want DataPortability

AUDIO - First DataPortability Steering Group Teleconference.

Last night (PST Time) we had our first Steering Group Teleconference. It was great, productive call with lots of outcomes that are currently being implemented. We also agreed to meet in a similar way every 2 weeks.

Listen to a recording of the call hosted here on John Breslin’s blog.

Thanks to everyone who organized and participated.

VIDEO - More DataPortability and Me Videos.

Video Inder - Microsoft (on Soapbox)

Robyn Tippins - Yahoo

John Breslin

Daniel Lewis

Deepak Singh

Mike Reynolds on Explaining DataPortability to Vendors

Mike Reynolds: What DataPortability means to me

Chris Saad speaking at ‘The Next Web Conference’.

Good news - I will be in Amsterdam speaking at the Next Web Conference on the 3rd and 4th of April - are you coming?

Here’s a bit of info about the conference from the website:

The Next Web Conference is THE European conference for industry thought-leaders, leading web-companies, innovative Startups, visionaries and real Web savvies. This third edition will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on April 3rd & 4th, 2008.

VIDEO - Discussing Personal Relevancy in Amsterdam.

Learning from the Future at the Next Web with Chris Saad from Maarten on Vimeo.

You can also watch the DataPortability keynote on Christian’s blog.

Flow on News Sites.

NineMSN Program Manager Paul Keen has written about a new NineMSN site feature that has the potential to dramatically improve the news reading user experience on their site.

They call it the “What’s Happening Now” module. Think Facebook News Feed for a news site. It logs and lists events such as new stories, first comments and other changes to the site in ‘real time’ in a reverse chronological order.

This is another example of how flow based presentation can improve visibility and usability when it comes to consuming large quantities of content/interactions.

Well done to Paul and the NineMSN team for this innovative approach.

Personal Reality - Personal Media.

I have written on my personal blog about what I am starting to call “Personal Reality“.

As I wrote there:

Personal Media includes your friend’s shared items. It includes the comments you leave on blogs. It includes Social Media. But it also includes private updates. Updates from your Intranet. Updates from your family. Updates from broadcast media. Updates that matter to you - no one else.

Personal Media is about recognizing that people are social and private. They are interested in personal experiences.

Check it out.

Faraday CEO One of the 30Under30’s.

There are only a limited number of start-up founders in the world, even less who sets his or her mind to change the very fabric of the internet. Chris is one of them.

When Chris and I founded Faraday Media, it was of extreme importance that just being another startup was not enough. We had to do something meaningful. Something significant. Not happy with fame or glory, we wanted to grow as people - giving back to a medium which had fed us for long time. To take the internet to a new place, just like Google had done nearly a decade ago. Its been a long road for Faraday, and while it hasn’t always been easy, Chris’ drive and aspiration has bought us to new and extraordinary heights, time after time after time; often at great personal sacrifice. I could never ask for a better CEO, or friend.

It’s no secret that Chris and I are the best of friends and it makes me very happy, to congratulate him on being selected as one of the 30Under30’s for Anthill, the leading entrepreneurial magazine in Australia.

From the website:

At 26, Chris Saad is one of Australia’s most impressive young web entrepreneurs. His theory and practice around web standards - specifically ‘DataPortability’ and ‘Attention Management’ - have gained significant traction and are set to have a profound impact on the evolution of media in the digital age. Saad has co-founded several web-related companies and organisations, most prominently Faraday Media in 2006, of which he is CEO. Faraday Media is developing Particls, a technology that learns user habit and taste and delivers relevant information to them via news crawler, SMS, email, flash visualisations, etc. He also co-founded the Media 2.0 Workgroup with 14 industry ‘commentators, agitators and innovators’. There’s no shortage of ideas or energy in this digitally-minded entrepreneur. One to watch in the years to come.

Make sure you click through to the Article, subscribe to the mag and read the other 29 profiles!

This is recognition to a man whom has dedicated and sacrificed so much for the greater good, a true philanthropist. Well done Chris, you are definitely deserving of this prestigious award and will no doubt be one of many in the years to come.

Nominate Faraday Media for Cool Company awards.

If you think Faraday Media is ‘cool’ don’t forget to nominate us for the Anthill Cool Company Awards.

Does asking for a nomination make us uncool? Hopefully not

Engagd among the top 5 apps in Australia.

Ross Dawson has published a list of the top 60 web apps in Australia in the BRW this week. At number 5, our very own Engagd.com - the engine that powers Attention Profiling for the web at large as well as Particls version 2.

This is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the development team. A huge thanks to Ashley Angell, Paul Jones and Jon Cianciullo who have been working tirelessly to manage, build and polish the Engagd platform.

Particls itself came in at 21. That will change of course once we launch the new version!

Thanks to Ross for his hard work compiling the list and including us.

Ashley went to Sydney to demo Engagd at the celebration party. By all accounts it was a big success. Somehow he made a developer platform interesting for a non-technical audience. Good work my friend!

Speaking at Future Of Media Summit 2008.

Are you in Sydney or the Bay Area? If so - come join me, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur and our host Ross Dawson at the Future of Media Summit 08. A Cross-continental conference.

Otherwise track #fom08 on the various social networks.

Scale is the New Black.

Over the past two weeks, the Faraday Media development team have been hard at work migrating all our products and initiatives into a new datacenter.  The new data center was much more suited to Faraday Media technology - much easier to scale, much faster and more reliable.

As part of our efforts, we’ve finally had the opportunity to give Particls and the Engagd platform their own dedicated servers, effectively quadrupling our processing capability.  This will allow us to service our partners and customers with increased reliability and confidence.

We’ve taken the opportunity with the new servers, to finally move our blogs off Blogger and onto a hosted WordPress solution, giving us far more flexibility with our blogs and presentation.

One problem, however, after we upgraded to WordPress 2.6, was that when we changed the permalink settings (to something more tollerable than ‘?p=x’) suddenly, index.php worked fine, but any other page reported as ‘not found’.  After serverl long hours Googling for the answer, there was lots of “answers” for WordPress on Apache (specifically about correct access to the .htaccess file and ensuring the correct PHP/Apache modules are installed) - but none about how to solve these issues on IIS.  It turns out that there are a number of known issues with 2.6 on IIS, which are now solved with the release of WordPress 2.6.1.

With most of our migration issues now sorted, we can now confidently continue to deliver our attention and data portablity solutions to the masses secure in the knowledge that our services are scalable and our bandwidth is plenty.

APML 1.0 Initial Draft.

The APML community has been itching for the APML 1.0 Specification for a little while now, and Paul, our resident genius; has spec’d out the initial draft for community discussion.  You can find the intial draft, at http://groups.google.com/group/apml-public/web/apml-1-0-draft-1

From the Public Google Group:

This comes with a very large fore note: This is a very early draft only, and nothing is set in stone. Given that the community is obviously itching to start seeing APML 1.0 progress, I felt that it would be an appropriate time to release this and assist in structuring the discussion. I intend to follow this with a few more emails that detail individual sections I believe need substantial addressing.

APML version 1.0 proposes a number of substantial changes over the previous 0.6 version, with some of the changes including, but not limited to;

• The Addition of an ‘Entity’ node to describe (People, Businesses and other non-metaphysical interests.
• The Addition of a ‘Location’ node to outline places of interest.
• The inclusion of an rdf:about node attribute to allow for richer RDF-type ontologies without reducing the “simple” nature of APML.

APML has come a long way since its inital conception a little over 2 years ago.  And I am very proud to be involved with a community of people all dedicated to creating an open format to give attention back to the people who own it.

The APML Workgroup is committed to ratifying this standard as soon as public commenting is evalutated, and is tasked to provide a smooth transition to the new version; so please feel free to head over to the public Google Group and put in your 2c.