The Real McCrea

A story breaking right now, according to VentureBeat’s Eric Eldon:

“MySpace is planning to introduce a set of new features that will allow its users to access their data on other sits, it is announcing today. The News Corp. owned company is calling this initiative “Data Availability,” which is a not especially clever take on the name of another group that’s working for great user data access across sites, called Data Portability — that MySpace is also joining.”

As Eric reports from the con call, they are announcing this along with Yahoo!, eBay, and Twitter. Focus seems to be primarily on profile data, like user’s photo.

I’ll add more facts and commentary as this story unfolds. But I think this is another great sign of an acceleration in the opening up of the Social Web.

Update:

Here’s a quote from MySpace:

“The walls around the garden are coming down—the implementation of Data Availability injects a new layer of social activity and creates a more dynamic Internet,” said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace. “We, alongside our Data Availability launch partners, are pioneering a new way for the global community to integrate their social experiences Web-wide.”

Coverage at Silicon Valley Insider.

This is a really cool move, focused on one of the main friction points — having to recreate our profile at every new social site we join. Here’s more from the press release:

“Data Availability pioneers a new way for users to dynamically share their user generated content and data with websites of their choosing. The Data Availability initiative is founded first and foremost on the simple and comprehensive user control of their own content and data—users will have control over what information they share and who they share it with. Additionally, rather than updating information across the Web (eg. default photo, favorite movies or music) for each site where a user spends time, now a user can update their profile in one place and dynamically share that information with the other sites they care about. MySpace will be rolling out a centralized location within the site that allows users to manage how their content and data is made available to third party sites they have chosen to engage with.”

The effort leverages OAuth and restful APIs. I’m looking for more details to see whether they’re fully leveraging open standards or introducing any proprietary formats.

More detailed coverage over at TechCrunch, from Michael Arrington.

And Caroline McCarthy of The Social has a nice writeup, declaring correctly, I believe, “This is a huge deal.”

I particularly like that they are saying this will be open to any site that wants to participate, including Facebook. Expect to see support at my employer, Plaxo. (We love all open Social Web initiatives equally.) Hey, Joseph, can you get on this? 🙂