14 DAY TRIAL // Arguments about data portability have been going on between Google and Facebook for quite a while now. Google has been saying that Facebook needs to open up more and enable users to take their data with them.
Facebook on the other hand is arguing that it protects its users' privacy by not enabling their friends to export their email addresses.
Now, Facebook has taken a small, but positive step towards playing well with others.
Facebook does allow users to export some data, but, apart from the fact that it's rather limited, the data was largely useless for importing into another website.
Whether this was intended or not is debatable, but Facebook has now repaired the mistake and has added microformat tags to the data, meaning that other websites or applications will be able to not only read but also understand the data in the files users get from the social network.
Microformats add metadata to everything inside Facebook's exported data, friends list (their names only), posts, photo tags and so on. Microformats is a standard way of formatting and detailing information on the web and it's of particular use when exporting or importing data.
Facebook now includes hCards with the exported data, which provide identity information, but since they only contain a name and no email or even a URL to the original profile, they're mostly useless.
Facebook uses the hAtom format for posts which now have additional info such as date of publishing as well as a link to the original post on the site.
Finally, media files are also a lot more useful now. With hMedia tags, all videos and photos exported from Facebook have titles, timestamps, comments and the album name.
Overall, it's a step in the right direction and it should make the data that Facebook is willing to let you take out more useful. That said, Facebook still has no intention of enabling users to get the email addresses of their friends, which is what the whole debate is centered on.