What is data portability all about?

You may have seen something on the Web about the Data Portability Workgroup lately. Every day someone seems to be joining the group. Do you know what it is all about? I came across this video in my feeds that tells you pretty much what the group is working to achieve:

DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

To me, data portability is a sort of Holy Grail for the Social Web. It means there is a collection of data stored at a central location that I can import into whichever service I use. It means I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time I create a profile. I am not sure if Google has anything to do with this yet but it sounds a bit like the promise of OpenSocial.

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