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MySpace Data Availability Live Now

Posted by James | Filed under Data Portability, Privacy, Web

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MySpace is set to roll out the first set of APIs for developers to implement Data Availability (an initiative in partnership with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter allowing users to share their profile data across sites). The company is expected to push documentation and specifications to their developer site soon.

Initially, users will be able to port their basic profile information, photos, and friend lists to supporting sites. It’s completely opt-in sharing, meaning that users will have to specify that they want third-party sites to have access to this data before it can be ported over. Specifically, MySpace says in a post announcing Data Availability:

You will find a new 3rd party site privacy dashboard located in the account settings of your MySpace profile. Just look under Linked Sites to view it. From here users can manage the relationship between their data and individual 3rd party sites. Any revocation of access to data from within MySpace takes place immediately at the external site as well. This ensures users won’t have their data floating around the internet without them being aware of it.

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At the moment, this page is blank for me, since I’m yet to come across any implementations of Data Availability in the wild. Nonetheless, it appears MySpace has beat Facebook to a tangible implementation of data portability. If you’re a developer and plan to implement Data Availability on your site, give me a shout so I can check it out!