It is a frustrating fact of modern internet life. Users of websites such as Facebook and Google spend hours building up and maintaining friend lists and e-mail address books, but when it comes time to move such social information to another online service they frequently find it impossible to get their data back out. Instead, they must start re-entering their personal details from scratch.

That may soon change. Over the past year, growing numbers of influential voices have been calling for the creation of common standards for “data portability” – a move that would enable widespread sharing of social information between websites.