For whatever reasons, we tend to think of interoperability and data portability as noble pursuits. We all have good intentions for making a case for it. Heck I personally would like to own my data and would like to exercise my freedom. Question is at what cost? There is definitely a cost to interoperability.

Best systems are designed for handful of experiences. Systems are optimized for user experience and interoperability is treated as an ingredient of that experience path. If there is a genuine case for including it, then it gets added otherwise there is no place for it. Seamless support for printer, camera and other peripherals in all Apple hardware is a good example of that. Interoperability should enhance user experience and not be an end in itself.

That brings me to the assertion I keep hearing nowadays - Teenagers are rejecting the idea of interoperability by sticking to what they like and then going for a kill-all button when their experience base is “totally” exhausted. Not sure if this is a long term trend or a side-effect of over-exposure to social networks. Big question is are they going to demand the preservation of their experience by moving around that investments? Scrabulous is shut down on Facebook, but can I take all my game history, stats and migrate it to my blog? Will there be enough technical hacks to help me navigate legal hurdles around that?

Obviously coming from software companies, any talk of interoperability relates to data portability standards. User experience is not necessarily part of that. User experience portability is left as a placeholder for innovative hacks.

I believe time has come for social media designers to invest in the design of experience graph. To me experience graph is a set of connected web interactions, spanning multi-domain web properties to generate experience which is unique to the user. User can initiate and end this experience from any social network platform. I should be able to start scrabulous on Facebook and finish it off on my Myspace profile, or have some friends participate in the same game from Bebo!

As always I have more questions than answers. To be continued..

[Pic source: The cover of David Thomas’ Not Guilty : In Defence of the Modern Man]