Consider this an answer to Rufus' call on Monday for lurkers (like me) to de-lurkify...

Perhaps some of you have heard of the DataPortability Workgroup, a loose collection of individuals and orgs whose mission is "to put all [relevant] existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability." The main site is at 

<http://www.dataportability.org/>

I confess that I hadn't heard of the DPW at all until yesterday, when reps from Google (Brad Fitzpatrick) and Facebook (Benjamin Ling) joined up. A lot of buzz has followed. See, eg, 

<http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/goog-fb-data.php>

<http://tinyurl.com/2tvgc9>

And a dissenting view...

<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=277>

Initiatives like the DPW crop up quite often, of course, and it remains to be seen whether this one will get real traction and lead to tangible results. At the least, though, it does give some indication of what the emerging 'norms' are in this space.

All best,

Nate