Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 20th February 2009
1 COMMENT 
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
JS-Kit have been in the news recently, with the announcement of a deal with Sun Microsystems to supply JS-Kit comments and other widgets throughout Sun’s properties. Having been slightly underwhelmed by their official press release, I thought I’d catch up with JS-Kit’s Chris Saad in person.
Chris is VP of Product Strategy at JS-Kit, and agreed to answer a few questions about the company’s development, and also some related to Data Portability, and Terms of Service (TOS) related to Data Ownership – obviously a hot topic this week.
Q: You acquired Haloscan in July 08, which of course gave you access to over half a million sites using that service. Have your expectations been met in the last six months, and what new opportunities or synergy do you see as a result of this coming up in the next year or so?
Haloscan was the service that started it all. It was the pioneer! So we are very proud to have been able to acquire it and continue to support its users. Unfortunately though, the platform is getting quite dated and the founder/servers are no longer accessible so we are working hard to upgrade all the users to JS-Kit as smoothly as possible.
Over the next year look for that process to be completed (sooner rather than later) and for both JS-Kit and Haloscan sites to continue to see massive improvements in features, speed, stability and support.
Q: You of course support OpenID in your widgets, and we know Chris Saad as a co-founder of DataPortability. In the context of developments like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect, what do you see as the critical factors for any company looking to 1) verify identity and 2) act as a trusted keeper of personal data.
Verifying real world identity is an interesting area of potential innovation. It’s not strictly related to DataPortability though. We have some ideas around this but nothing to announce just yet.
Regarding trusted custodianship of data, we have a new initiative that will be announced next week to make our intentions even clearer than they are today.
We are of course actively participating in the DataPortability project (I am on the Steering group and chair the Communications Taskforce), we have announced our intention to support all appropriate login mechanisms and plan to implement all the recommendations of the DataPortability project – some even before they become fully ratified.
Q: Facebook’s recent climb-down on its Terms of Service (TOS) changes highlights an issue that, with the increasing trend to being able to share and repackage data, will become more important. It may be relatively clear who owns copyright in an image or a recording, but conversations about an image, or added to a thread in a blog, or comments related to a video, are more complex, as they can exist only with the implied or express consent of multiple parties. What do you see as the key factors that surround this issue – and what developments do you think will be critical here in the future?
First, clear, jargon-free statements from publishers and tool vendors will be critical to helping users understand what they can reasonably expect from their social experiences on any given service.
The DataPortability project is working on this problem in its TOS/EULA Taskforce.
There are also all sorts of gray areas when it comes to ownership. If we both contribute to a shared piece of data, who gets to delete it? These are hard questions, but that does not mean we can ignore them. Clear lines can and should be drawn. Some of those lines will be Social Contracts rather than legal or technical ones. The ones we can define in code or terms of service, however, should be defined and placed in the public domain for all to reference and use.
Q: Finally, anything you’d like to blow your trumpet about?
We love our users – their feedback is inspiring. Stay tuned because a heterogeneous social web requires social tools that play well with everyone. This year is the year to start implementing many of the things that were discussed last year.
Written on 14th October 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Khris Loux is a special guy. He’s one of the most optimistic and energetic persons I’ve met. That was during The Next Web conference, last April. He gave a keynote about open standards and interviewed Mr. DataPortability, Chris Saad, on stage. They certainly connected, and not just on the white couch: industry visionary Saad has joined Js-Kit as a Strategic Advisor.
But Loux’s positive attitude not just serves his network, he also managed to close a second round of funding in a time that everybody seems too busy worrying about the credit crunch.
JS-Kit’s Series B was led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Series A Investor TEF3. With the financial injection of $3 million, total funding of JS-Kit comes down to $4.8 million.
Thanks social media revolution, time for the next level
Next to the new strategic adviser, the funding of the social widgets provider has already enabled expansion of the development team to a dozen engineers and a quadrupling of the size of the data center. Loux: “We are now at 12 engineers and plan to continue to grow that team to support our growing user base.”
Loux also says he “has been proud to be part of the social media revolution” and that he “looks forward to taking things to the next level in the coming months and years”. Meaning that JS-Kit will also expand its commercial activities to achieve profitability in the medium term.
Nice-looking stats
When looking at both the statistics of Quintcast (cookies installed in the US) and Compete (visitors from the US), anyone can tell JS-Kit’s reach is increasing. Partly thanks to partnerships with major media players like WorldNow (good for 19 million potential users). When taking that in account, it’s actually not that surprising that JS-Kit keeps investing, financial crisis or not.
Photo credit: Anne Helmond. More information on Techcrunch now.
Written on 23rd June 2008
3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Remember the little OpenID incident at Next08 in May? I promised Andreas Stephan from Six Groups that I would blog about his service, if he would make OpenID support his top priority. Well, so it happened, and on June 6th, Six Group integrated OpenID login. Apparently, that has inspired another big German start-up as well, since Oliver Moser from Jimdo mailed me that his service also supports OpenID now.
Jimdo is an online Ajax-based website builder, which makes it easy for basically anyone to create a slick-looking page – sort of like an online iWeb. Their list of widgets is impressive, and Alexa tells us the service has been steadily growing. Here’s what Oliver has sent me:
From today on we’re supporting OpenID – but not as a provider, just as a host. Jimdo-users can now sign into their Jimdo-Page with their OpenID. But more important, they can use their personal Jimdo-Domain as an OpenID, even though Jimdo is not the provider. So if they comment on a blog post they can use their own domain – which of course makes a lot of sense.
You may wonder why Jimdo doesn’t act like a provider. Oliver has an answer to that question too: “There are already so many of then, so there’s no need for Jimdo being an additional one. And since OpenID enables Dataportability, we can actually make great use of it.”
Last week, some people at Supernova said OpenID and Dataportability have just become press releases machines. I can see why they say that, but I also think that it doesn’t hurt anyone (apart from our email inbox) since more and people will get familiar with the idea of open data. Also the less web-savvy ones, like most of the Jimdo users.
Written on 23rd April 2008
5 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
DataPortability was founded in November of 2007 to promote the idea that individuals should have control over their data by determing who can use it and how it can be used. This includes access to data that is under the control of another entity.
After Red Hat sent a Cease and Desist claiming that the DataPortability logo was too similar (Identical, in their words) to the Fedora Logo the DataPortability Project needed a new design. So they asked their community to come up with designs and vote on them. They received over 400 designs and thousands of votes.
This is the new logo on the left, the old logo in the middle and the Fedora logo on the right:
(more…)
Written on 4th April 2008
3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Khris Loux and Chris Saad became friends because of the Next Web. During all the meetings they noticed they generally had the same interest and ideas. Not that those shared interests matter though, since Khris started the couch interview with the remark that we all have to be friends with Chris. Whether we’re publishers, entrepreneurs or bloggers, Chris Saad’s Dataportability is good for you.
Thus I’m really glad that I digitally met Chris a couple of months ago when I interviewed him for this blog. I asked him how I should explain Dataportability to Average Joe and his answer probably is a good start for this post: “A user would simply log onto a site, grant permission, and their friends, personal details and media – images, video, documents – are already populated and accessible – Nothing more complex than that.”
Just like during Diggnation, there was beer on stage. The Next Web is one rock ‘n’ roll conference
When he said something similar on the couch, the audience rewarded with a round of applause. So it’s clear that users are looking forward to get control of their data. Yet what are the advantages for the vendors? Chris: “Vendors get a broader picture of the user. Google owns the search space, yet they have no idea what books people buy on Amazon.”
This sounds good, but at the same time companies traditionally make money because they have locked in their data. So all the big guys who are joining Dataportability now, aren’t they just doing that for good PR? Chris: “If some companies joined the Dataportability group just for the PR that is just fine with us, since they do endorse the conversation. And if they don’t implement the new open standards, others will. So if they don’t implement, that’s actually great since it gives everyone in this room a chance to out-innovate them. Now, the task of Dataportability is to give the companies best practices for implementing new standards. If those companies say they will implement, but actually don’t, it’s up to the bloggers and the audience to confront them with this flaw”.
Chris then threw out some great one-liners, like: [to companies:] “You don’t own users, users own you” and “If you don’t join the standard of the time, you’ll loose”. But I’d like to conclude with probably the most important one: “The new innovation platform is data”.
By the way, the audience could ask questions on Twitter. So I asked Chris which major company is taking a lead on the field of open data standards. His answer? Microsoft! Chris: “The ones who are loosing now are very interested and they’re the ones who apply pressure to the others”.
Written on 7th January 2008
6 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Australian web attention expert Chris Saad is on a mission: he wants a complete reference design to combine technologies that make it possible for users to share their personal data between chosen tools. “We need a DHCP for Identity. A distributed File System for data.” DataPortability.org and a Google Group are his main platforms.
And what will this look like? Saad: “A user would simply log onto a site, grant permission, and their friends, personal details and media – images, video, documents – are already populated and accessible – Nothing more complex than that.”
Saad realizes he needs the support of users in order to complete his mission. “Users will need to be educated about their rights”, he says. But how on earth will he convince the normal user, Average Joe on Facebook, to start shouting: “We want to share our data!”? Since it’s a rather complicated and abstract story for people who aren’t involved in the Web 2.0 scene.
Saad of course thought about this and sent me a four-point list, explaining how he’s going to evangelize his mission:
- “People like Robert Scoble (watch his video) and other ‘Celebrity User Stories’ will help bring light to the issue.
- An education campaign needs to be (and will be) created with documentation and examples designed for users to understand. We have started this process by starting some ‘ActionPacks‘.
- We will begin promoting the DP Badge as a sort of ‘Intel Inside’ brand to look for when visiting sites. We hope this will be a simple way of identifying services and vendors that respect user rights and conform to the reference design.
- Workgroup members and early adopter start-ups will begin implementing the DataPortability reference designs and act as shining examples for users to get a feel for what the world could be like.”
His last point is interesting, since some start-ups and workgroup members might gain market share by having first mover advantage. Saad: “As you can tell by looking at the workgroup members already, there are individuals who happen to work at very large companies such as Yahoo, Myspace, Seesmic, Disney, BBC, NineMSN, Dow Jones/Fox and others. That’s not to say those companies have committed to anything, but the individuals involved are very smart and committed people.”
“A DataPortability enabled experience should be simple to use and to be expected”
Apparently, Saad wants to start a buzz in the blogosphere and geeky parts of the web, hoping that they will reach the average customers. “Exactly, we will start with early adopters and influencers and work our way into the mainstream. Ultimately though, the hope is that a ‘DataPortability enabled experience’ should be simple to use and to be expected,” Saad explains.
That will take some time, if it ever comes true. Yet, as long as Saad keeps explaining his plan in a simple way and manages to prove the major advantages, Average Joe just might start shouting.
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