Bombshell: Google and Facebook Join DataPortability.org
The DataPortability Workgroup announced this morning that representatives from both Google and Facebook are joining its ranks. The group is working on a variety of projects to foster an era of Data Portability …
Context & Ripple Effects
The announcement lands one day after Facebook's very public data access dispute with Robert Scoble over exporting contact data, which put the question of who controls social graph data on front pages. The DataPortability Workgroup — already drawing individual participants from Plaxo — now has named representatives from both Google and Facebook inside the tent.
The pickup was broad and fast: TechCrunch, Valleywag, and several other outlets covered the same news on the day, but the framing split sharply — Valleywag's 'change nothing' and Irregular Enterprise's 'still born' capture a skeptic camp that sees membership as PR rather than commitment.
First-order effects
- Facebook and Google now have seats in the workgroup drafting interoperability standards, meaning the two largest holders of social graph data are at the table while Facebook's Scoble export fight is still live.
- Plaxo and smaller open-stack advocates gain legitimacy: their portability agenda is no longer a fringe ask but something the incumbents felt compelled to join.
Second-order effects
- Membership creates an expectations trap: once Facebook and Google lend their names to a portability workgroup, every refusal to let users export contacts or profiles becomes a visible contradiction competitors can attack.
- Other identity and platform players face pressure to follow suit or be cast as the walled garden holdouts, turning workgroup participation into a competitive signal rather than a technical decision.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, control of user data shifts from a default of platform lock-in to a negotiated standards process, with export rights becoming a baseline expectation that regulators and users alike treat as table stakes.
- The skeptic reaction points to the real risk: standards bodies populated by the incumbents themselves can absorb momentum without shipping interoperability, making enforcement of any portability commitments the structural battleground.
The trend: Social platforms are moving from closed walled gardens toward negotiated data portability, with the biggest data holders joining standards groups faster than they change their actual export policies.