Digg, DataPortability, and business models

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Following my post last week on the DataPortability Working Group, Digg has just announced on its blog that it is joining it too. It says:

Want to sync your Digg friends network with another service? We want to help you do that.

Want to use your Digg activity to get recommendations from another web site? We’re working on that, too.

Digg already supports many of the open standards that let you use your data on sites other than Digg… We’ll be adding more open standards… in the coming months.

VentureBeat offers some interesting thoughts on what this might imply, including social network portability and targeted advertising models.

Just as important is the further momentum this adds to DataPortability. Mashable shows the results of a user survey on what people think about DataPortability, showing just under half think there are great results already. With Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and now many of the other relevant parties involved, it’s up to the Dataportability group to fulfil its promise. Knowing the people involved, their technical competence and their passion for doing this right, the odds are strongly stacked in favor of this significantly changing the online landscape this year. Internet business strategists will have to reconsider business models. And most importantly, as I wrote the other day, the real potential is to massively increase the value of the Net to all users.