There is an excellent post by Marshall Kirkpatrick at RWW, discussing the economics of data portability.

“We argue that it’s in everyone’s best interest that the data be freed. Vendors have far more to gain by working to add value to freely flowing data than they do from trying to horde as much data as they can”.

We at Strands have already explained our vision of why we think not only users but also vendors will benefit from data portability, and why it is important for web personalization.

When we are online, we generate at least two types of data. Digital assets such as list of friends, pictures, etc, that are normally the focus of the data portability community. And taste-related data, data which describes our preferences, our tastes. This is data that can be encapsulated and shared just like digital assets, and is the area where Strands is focused.