Caring is sharing, people, especially when it comes to your personal data. Leading developers from important social-network sites joining a "data-portability" advocacy group doesn't represent history in the making. It's a marketing campaign to make everyone feel sickly sweet, knowing that these websites are so concerned about our information. Like the Care Bears, by signing on to the DataPortability Working Group, top coders like Brad Fitzpatrick, Dave Recordon, and Ben Ling have joined forces to form a group which we can only call by one name. Presenting: The Share Bears!

Google and Facebook have joined the DataPortability Workgroup, in a moment the blogosphere is heralding as historic. The group's mission is to make all personal data "discoverable" and "shareable" across websites. This moment is about as historic as the intake of oxygen. The beauty of working groups is that they rarely change anything other than public perception. Brad Fitzpatrick of Google and Benjamin Ling make particularly handsome poster boys for the data-sharing movement. [They can port our data anytime. - Ed.] But neither has real pull to change their employer's business strategy.