The concept that online you own your own data and you should be able to take it with you from one social network or Website to another is gaining a lot of traction these days. Yahoo, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google, Plaxo, , and even Facebook have joined the Dataportability Work Group to figure out standards. Now, Microsoft is joining as well. With 420 million Windows Live IDs tied to user profiles, Microsoft’s involvement is encouraging. Are the days of data lock-in really behind us?

Don’t count on it.