Friend Connect and Data Portability

Data portability has become a hot hot pipin' hot topic -- and it's about time. Let me try to nutshell this concept without butchering it too badly: you probably have profiles and networks of contacts scattered across the web, like on

Facebook
LinkedIn
MySpace
Outlook
Match.com
Fantasy Baseball
Second Life
XBOX Live
That second email account you use for illicit connections
AIM

And so on. So the idea that someone or something will enable you to connect all those disparate blobs of data and personal social communities is rather appealing. It's great for the consumer, and I am guessing not so great for second tier social media, but it's clearly an idea whose time has come.

Google's initiative called Friend Connect is the latest in a series of announcements that flag applications or functionality that -- with your permission -- will scan all the disparate communities and ask you if you want to port individuals and information to new environments. Last week I told you that YOS, the Yahoo Social initiative, offers similar promises. MySpace and Facebook have also announced such initiatives.

And of course Open ID is the granddaddy of this stuff.

Naturally, this demonstrates what we've been seeing for months and years -- that companies are beginning to realize that their isolated databases have less value than the collaborative relationships and connections that their members can bring.

I first became familiar with this from Linked In, which frequently offers to scan my Outlook and Yahoo email for members that I can decide to link to. And that's nice. But how cool will it be when this stuff removes the potentially enormous switching costs that keep us using lesser platforms when great replacements have emerged?

I am aflutter with antcipation.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.