Portable Contacts is an open protocol to make it easier for developers to give users a secure way to access the address books and friends lists they have accrued online. The goal of the project is to increase data portability by creating a common and open specification to bridge proprietary contacts APIs such as Google's GData Contacts API, Yahoo's Address Book API, and Microsoft's Live Contacts API. It combines OAuth, XRDS-Simple and a wire-format based on vCard harmonized with schema from OpenSocial.

The editor of the Portable Contacts standard was Joseph Smarr of Plaxo and the project was co-maintained by Chris Messina.

Portable Contacts has been used by services such as Google Contacts,[1] Windows Live Messenger Connect,[2] as well as other specification such as OStatus.

References

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  1. ^ "Developer's Guide - Portable Contacts API - Google Code". Google Inc. Retrieved 2011-07-18.
  2. ^ Logan, Angus (2010-06-28). "Developing with Messenger Connect: Recognizable & intuitive". Retrieved 2011-07-18.
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