I asked the P2P Research list for some reactions regarding the new Cliqset service.

Is it the open social graph, i.e. user-owned data portability, we’ve been waiting for?

Here’s the response from Marc Fawzi:

“My own somewhat unique view on the social data debate has been that we need an encrypted Social ID card that is purchased blank from Staples or WalMart and populated by the user with their social graph. The card would be much like the electronic cards that companies give their employees to access their VPN (virtual private network.)

It’s been my view that services like Facebook, GoogleConnect, MySpace, and all services requiring user data must authorize with the USER (the owners of the data) and be granted access by the user. Currently the plastic ID cards we have for functioning within society have nothing to do with the online world, and that is a good thing, yet there is an increasing need to have an secure Social ID card that lists our name, as we choose it (i.e. actual, alias, nick, etc), and all our relationships that also contains our authentication info (like a global ID) and that can be used just like current VPN secure access cards.

No company on earth should hold information about my social graph (no matter how open) and once I own my social graph and have it go everywhere with me (with backup of encrypted data on my PC) I may even charge services like Facebook for accessing it. Like wise I could store all the pages I visited (optional, you don’t have to) and charge advertisers for accessing that info on my Social ID card so that they can give me targetted advertising for which they make money. RIght now Google is literally STEALING that data from users by having users consent to it without telling the users that Google actually PROFITS from that data. Facebook also profits from having my social graph data and that of 100 million other users. If users pull their data out and put it on a secure Social ID card then Facebook et al would have to share the profits with the users!!!! whereas the bastards are making hundreds of millions off of user data.

When it comes to product/process data for peers-as-prosumers (production inputs and outputs, including energy use, byproducts, ingredients/BoM, environmental footprint, etc) that is ‘common data’ that should be in some open always-accessible, i.e. if I make some software application or food product I need to release all metadata for that product into some open database.

But I myself is not a product. I have the right to own my own social (and other) data. I generate data through life (e.g. relationships, websites visited, interest, purchases, etc) and I should be the one to profit from that data, not Facebook or Google who turn around and sell it for hard cold cash, without even having the decency to share the profit with me the generator of that data and its owner. It’s theft by mass ignorance. “