Yahoo to compete with Google and Facebook in data portability

Having a single log-in to access all of your online favourites is becoming increasingly popular, as top internet companies are developing more and more ways of managing data portability. With tools such as OpenID, Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect, it’s getting more simple every day to manage your password and login information, online.

Yahoo has recently joined the data portability bandwagon, by launching a new tool: Yahoo Updates, which has been developed in conjunction with JS-Kit.

JS-Kit is a social networking facility which connects up over 600,000 sites, through a comment widget. The widget has now been linked in to Yahoo Updates, allowing users to show comments and articles from all over the web, through their Yahoo Updates feed. In addition, the Yahoo user ID will now have the capability to be used across the internet, with a similar portability currently deployed by Google and OpenID. Featuring new APIs, the latest development is available as part of Yahoo’s overall Open Strategy for users.

For those of us who are still not quite up to date with data portability and its features, RWW defines it like this:

“The vision for all these kinds of systems is that allowing readers to authenticate themselves with a trusted 3rd party makes them more likely to post comments, offers exposure to site owners when comments are syndicated into activity streams on bigger sites and should allow site owners to access verified information about their readers’ profiles and interests. That last part is still something we’re waiting for, but that should be part of the value proposition to site owners.”

The basic principle of all data portability is to make it much easier for us to navigate about the net without carting a load of log-ion details around with us. Software such as Roboform has made it easy for us to remember our details, but with this new technology, internet giants such as Yahoo and Google are going all out to make it easier than ever before for us to maintain a consistent online identity, wherever we choose to surf.

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