"There are a couple different ways to look at this as a website owner," he told us. "If you already use a sharing service like AddToAny, ShareThis, or AddThis, you might not notice much difference. However, OExchange makes it easier for those service providers to support less well-known sharing services. As such, that means that site owners may see a boost in attention from a wider audience than before."

He said that "because this may give rise to a long-tail of sharing providers, it’s possible that content will be shared across a wider and more diverse audience than before."

OExchange is just one of handful of open protocols that are being harnessed to smooth out the social web, and make for a more seamless user experience from site to site. Others include OpenID, OAuth, Webfinger, ActivityStrea.ms, PubsubHubbub, and Salmon.

Google is playing a large role in the advocacy of of these open protocols. Google Buzz, for example, places a great deal of emphasis on the kind of openness they provide, and the kind of openness that is frankly lacking from the much more popular (at least in terms of user count) "Open" graph of Facebook – by far, the largest social network.

At Google I/O last month, WebProNews spoke with Joseph Smarr of Google’s technical staff about various open protocols and how they can help websites. He does a pretty good job of putting it into terms the non-techie can probably understand:

More WebProNews Videos

"If you’re a webmaster and you’ve got a new site and you want people to check it out, you want to limit that friction as much as possible, right? You want to make it super easy for people to come and find out about who you are," says Smarr.

"It’s going to be better for you, and it’s going to be better for you users, who are going to have a much more convenient time," he says.

Smarr also makes an interesting point about the web in general. "The web started with the right open standards. You know, HTML and HTTP, and then anybody could just stand up a new webserver, and anybody could link to it, and that’s what allowed that incredible innovation to happen. So we basically want to get that same set of building blocks right on the social web…"

As Messina told us upon the launch of OExchange, "the benefits of any open protocol or technology really only offers dividends when it becomes widely adopted by many providers."

We also have an interview from Google I/O with Messina we will be posting on our Video Blog before long.

DataPortability.org is heading up a workgroup that will hopefully do just that. While many groups and companies are taking part in this effort, the recent addition of a few big name players has attracted a lot of attention.

The following companies are among those that recently joined the workgroup:

• Google
• Facebook
• Plaxo
• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• SixApart
• Twitter
• Microsoft

According to ReadWriteWeb, Mozilla is examining the idea of joining the workgroup and is expected to join.

WebProNews spoke with Chris Saad, the Co-Founder and Chairman of Data Portability. He said,

“…Data Portability Workgroup is a group of passionate individuals in various fields of expertise from bloggers, to technical experts, to legal experts, to vendors who are interested in solving the problem of creating bridges between applications, so users can ultimately share their videos, photos, documents, and friends….”

This coming together with rival companies is a big step for those involved. However, they all realize the results will benefit their own individual companies. WebProNews contacted Google and Facebook and while they were unable to interview, they did release the following statements.

"Google shares DataPortability.org’s vision of open standards, transparency, and user choice.  We’re looking forward to participating in an ongoing and important conversation about these issues." — Google Spokesperson

“We are committed to giving users control of their data on Facebook and, at the same time, safeguarding the privacy of users. Facebook joined the DataPortability Workgroup in order to actively participate in industry dialogue and to represent feedback from the Facebook community.” — Ben Ling, the Director of Product Marketing for Facebook Platform and Facebook’s Representative in the Data Portability Workgroup.

Speaking of Facebook, it is very interesting that both Robert Scoble and Plaxo have joined the workgroup considering the recent controversial issue involving the three companies.

Plaxo asked Scoble to test one of their features to see if it would export data from Facebook and then import it into Plaxo. Facebook detected the activity and kicked Robert Scoble off Facebook.

Both Data Portability and Plaxo agree that the situation brought the issue of data portability to forefront of everyone’s focus.

Plaxo’s Vice President of Marketing, John McCrea said,

“… Everyone knew that 2008 would be the year for data portability, but this situation brought the discussion to the front and center…”

To get more information on the Data Portability Workgroup, check out the WebProNews video. It takes a deeper look at the topic including interviews from Chris Saad, John McCrea, and Plaxo’s Representative in the Data Portability Workgroup, Joseph Smarr.