Joseph Smarr of Plaxo often uses the phrase "Open Building Blocks for the Social Web." This refers to the essential "building blocks" needed to make the web more social and deepen interoperability across services.

These "building blocks" include OpenID, OAuth, microformats, and OpenSocial—all of which have been covered on this blog as crucial standards shaping the future of the social web. Now, another important piece has been added to the mix: Portable Contacts.

Plaxo, where Joseph Smarr works, has already released a working API.

What is Portable Contacts? #

Portable Contacts, is an easy-to-implement "people data" API that provides secure access to both traditional address book data and to modern social application data (profiles and friends lists).

Looking at the current draft specification, it covers:

  • Discovery mechanisms (XRDS-Simple)
  • Authentication / authorization methods (OAuth, Basic authentication)
  • Query parameters (sorting, filtering, etc.)
  • Response formats (JSON, XML)
  • Error codes
  • Contact schemas

It is designed with careful consideration not to deviate significantly from existing specifications such as vCard and OpenSocial.

Use Cases for Portable Contacts #

Since Portable Contacts represents address books and friend lists, it can be applied across a variety of areas.

Exchanging Friend Lists Between Social Network Services #

As already demonstrated by MySpace's DataAvailability, it will be possible to do things like importing your MySpace friend list into Twitter.

Exchanging Address Books with Desktop Applications #

For example, syncing the Mac OS X Address Book with Microsoft Outlook's contacts via a web service can now be done over a more unified standard than ever before.

Syncing Address Books Between Mobile Phones and SNS #

You will be able to load your SNS friend list directly onto your mobile phone, or vice versa. If services like Ripplex sit in between, even more interesting possibilities could emerge.

Relationship with OpenSocial #

Wait, aren't OpenSocial and Portable Contacts the same thing? Some of you might be wondering. Yes, fundamentally, OpenSocial's People API and Portable Contacts serve the same purpose. Having multiple similar specifications is generally undesirable, which made me wonder about this as well.

In fact, thanks to efforts led by Joseph Smarr, Portable Contacts was merged into the OpenSocial v0.8.1 specification. In other words, the OpenSocial People API specification and the Portable Contacts specification are the same.

The OpenSocial v0.8.1 specification should be published soon, and you will be able to see that its content aligns directly with Portable Contacts.

Summary #

The movement to build a social web ecosystem is accelerating as pieces like Portable Contacts fall into place. We should definitely keep a close eye on the moves made by the major players in the social web space going forward.