Microsoft's David Treadwell, a VP at Windows Live will be joining the Data Portability Working Group. After Facebook and Google this is the next high profile membership to speak about.

The Data Portability Working Group seeks to provide a standard mechanism for individuals to port their social network information across the web and thus allow competition among web companies to persist on the basis of services alone.

An excerpt from the Live Blogs

"Today Microsoft is announcing that it has joined DataPortability.org, a group committed to advancing the conversation about the portability, security and privacy of individuals' information online. There are important security and privacy issues to solve as the internet evolves, and we are committed to being an integral part of the industry conversation on behalf of our users.

The decision to join DataPortability.org is an outgrowth of a deeper theme that technology and the internet should be deployed to help people be at the center of their online worlds, a theme that has begun to permeate our products and services over the past few years. We believe the logical evolution of the internet is to enable the removal of barriers to provide integrated, seamless experiences, but to do so in a manner that ensures that users retain full control over the security and privacy of their information.

Read Write Web also has a good video link on what the Data Portability Working Group is all about.