Users feel frustrated because they have to re-register and give their access info every time. But companies are scared to make data portable and want to protect their piece of the pie.
One issue is who actually owns the content on a social network. Most agree the user profile and any data they enter belongs to the user. But what about things like comments? Who owns those? Myspace thinks they own any content that their network enables to happen.
There is a data portability initiative that will allow a user to take their data with them. All the big names are signed up. It will take time and is a big project. The big question is will the companies actually do something in this area. There needs to be a standard the everyone uses so that this works.
How do you fix these issues when most users don’t understand the problem? Give users the option of who should have access to their data. This will let people do what feels comfortable to them. It really comes down to functionality to users and what they want to do. Also users need to be a bit more savy when their online presence is concerned. Be aware of what you want online and what you don’t.
How does privacy and portability effect business models? Most people expect that if they can add things to a site that they can pull them out. Business models that take this into account will be more effective. I think of the walmart photos and I can upload them and then download the original as well. We need to do a better job of this on WorldVitalRecords.com. If a user sees they can upload a gedcom file and can’t download their work it may make people not even start their family tree.
What are some things companies can do now to help privacy and data portability? Let users link to external sites. Make sure you can produce and consume the content you create on your site. Use meta data from the web like google profile data if you can. Dont restrict user from doing the things they want to do. How do you manage identities on your site? OpenID is a good way to do this. Yahoo has given 250 Million openids to all their users.
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