A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web

I’m an early signer to the Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web, a document whose goal is to give the data to users. Idealistic? Impossible? maybe, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t demand it. It takes more than a small group of loud thought leaders to make a movement work, it requires the entire user base to vote by their clicks and eyeballs.

Many companies want to horde their user data, a lock-in model is classic web. The savvy brand will realize that by building a website that users want, and letting them expand to other networks and having ownership, maybe, just maybe they’ll return.

The open-data movement is really about ownership, users want to own their data. The only way it will work is if you tell your website you want ownership. I suggested that users should have the ability to delete their own data if need be too.

Joseph Smarr has as post on the Plaxo blog, they’re building such a platform that will allow the movement of data, Marc Canter lists early signers, Scoble is in on it, and there will be plenty others.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 2:06 am and is filed under Identity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.