Social network portability is one of several user-interface ideas and suggestions in the area of data-portability. As users, our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by, and shared between our chosen (and trusted) tools or vendors. When you join a new site, you should be able to import or preferably subscribe to your profile information and your social network from any existing profile of yours. 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. This problem is solved by a number existing technologies and initiatives: Microformats, OpenID, OAuth, RDF, RSS, OPML and APML.
Tags: APML, Authentication, Bloglines, Cluztr, Cork’d, Dandelife, Data Portability, Engagd, Fire Eagle, Flickr, FOAF, Get Satisfaction, Google, hCard, Idiomag, Last.fm, Magnolia, Microformats, OAuth, Open Social, OpenID, OpenLink Data Spaces, OPML, Particls, Pownce, RDF, RSS, Semantic Web, Social Networking, social networks, Technorati, Twitter, Upcoming, Web 2.0, XFN, Yahoo