Facebook, Google, and Plaxo joined the Data Portability Workgroup to let users move their identity, photos, and relationships between social networks. Tom calls it a DHCP for identity. The technology exists; they just need a reference design.
Well, hi, it's Tom. This is a very brief update on a video I made a couple of days ago about who owns our relationships. Let me read you this. Just read this online here a minute or two ago. This is from TechCrunch. I'll put the link to the post up here. And the headline is, this day will be remembered. Facebook, Google, and Plaxo Join the Data Portability Workgroup. Now, the Data Portability Workgroup, with the link to which I'll also put up here, reads like this. Here's their 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. Now, briefly and simply, this means that at some point here in the not-too-distant future, we're not going to be trapped in any of the social networks that we get ourselves involved in and that we'll be able to move around and to have our relationships move around with us. This is a big deal. The fact that Google— Google has been involved in this up to now, but Facebook wasn't involved with it, and as long as Facebook wasn't involved, it was probably going to be not successful. This is a terrific development in helping us all to be able to have more control over our own relationships with one another. So just wanted to let you know this just came across and thought it was pretty cool. So take care and I'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.
