Wish Bear / Chris Saad: Formed the DataPortability Working Group in the hopes that his wish — that all websites would share their data — comes true for everyone. Although Saad is not a major player at a big Internet company, pretending to make wishes come true is still a lot of fun.

Tenderheart Bear / Brad Fitzpatrick: Helps everyone show and express their feelings. He helps his fellow Share Bears be as caring as they can be, as the most prominent developer to join the Share Bears. The Share Bears don't have a leader, but as the lead developer of OpenID and other open-source tools at blogging company Six Apart, now the poster boy for Google's OpenSocial platform, Brad Fitzpatrick comes closest to it.

Friend Bear / Dave Recordon: As a close friend of Tenderheart Bear and his replacement as spokesman for open technologies at Six Apart, is a kind and friendly bear. Sometimes he disagrees with his buddy over Google's definition of friendly. Thinks "the social graph" is the meaning of being a good friend.

Love-A-Lot Bear / Ben "Bling" Ling: is a pretty and perky bear who helps spread love and help it along wherever he goes, be it Google or Facebook where he recently defected to to lead its platform program.

Birthday Bear / Joseph Smarr: Plaxo's chief architect hates it when people forget birthdays. That's why he wants you to sync up all of your online identities, so no one misses out on your happy day.

Cheer Bear / Matthew Rothenberg: As the representative for well-liked and fairly open social photo site Flickr, is a very happy and perky bear, who helps everyone be their happiest and cheer up those who are unhappy, like those who work for Google or Facebook.

Grumpy Bear / Marc Canter: Teaches us all that it's okay to be grumpy and vocal about open standards sometimes, but it's also silly to let grumpiness go too far when your own philosophy rarely results in business success. Canter's PeopleAggregator is an example of both supporting open technologies and its irrelevance, the silver lining and the rain cloud.

Bedtime Bear / Marc Canter: So special that he captures the personality of two Share Bears, Canter is a very sleepy bear. He helps everyone get a good night's sleep and have sweet dreams of portable data.

Good Luck Bear / Robert Scoble: Isn't a developer and doesn't work for a major Internet player, but sheer luck has made Scoble an intriguing bit player in the data-portability movement.

Editor's note: This is Tim Faulkner's last piece for Valleywag. Faulkner has been a contributor to the site since May 2007.

Here's a typical email from one presenter:

Just make sure Owen Thomas knows what we do and doesn't mistake us for a SNS that is offered directly to end-users! We offer up a 'meta-network' engine - so in fact folks can run their OWN entire Ning."

Here's how it works:

• You send me (paul@valleywag.com) a summary of your onstage presentation or booth demo. Include a phone number for questions.
  
• I'll post a jargon-free rewrite of it.

For example, Marc Canter's PeopleAggregator — described in the email above — comes in two forms. The easy version is an online service that lets customers click to build their own social network-y sites, such as the Poker Players Alliance. More Web-savvy techies and organizations can run PeopleAggregator software on their own servers. Sample customers: GT Channel, Let's Cricket, and the Dell/Intel Extreme Gaming Tour.

Marc's 8:30 a.m. workshop, Open Data, will focus on getting Web 2.0 online services to allow customers to move their data around among different sites as they see fit. For example, I've spent two years building my linkedIn profile and network. Why can't I automatically import all that info to Facebook, the way I imported my Internet Explorer bookmarks into Firefox? It turns out, Marc says, that linkedIn lets me save my info to an easily read file format, but Facebook isn't set up to read it yet. Sounds like a killer app in the waiting.

It's like tech reporting, but in English! Who's next? (Warning to publicists: The one word I don't understand is "embargo.")

You see, in today's Silicon Valley, it's not enough to build a successful business. In fact, if you have any chance of being successful, the church of open standards will demand you bow down before their altar and tithe your users to them.

Canter, in short, wants Zuckerberg to join the kibbutz and sing a round of "Kumbaya" while holding hands. Not to mention solving all the industry's "problems" — the chief problem, apparently, being that most social networks aren't nearly as successful as Facebook, and Canter feels Zuckerberg owes them a helping hand. Never mind what "opening" Facebook might mean for its users (one word: spam).

Oh, and Canter's screed certainly wouldn't have anything to do with Canter's own also-ran social network, PeopleAggregator, which has attracted few users despite "doing the right thing." The right thing, apparently, being "failing." Sure. Canter can't replicate the success of Facebook, and he can't make the marketplace care about his values. But he can buoy his reputation as a pundit by bullying Facebook. Welcome to the kibbutz. There sure is a lot of manure on these fields, isn't there?

Oof. Makes MySpace look like Google.com. Owner Marc Canter committed the cardinal sin of Web 2.0 with his site: He didn't make it pretty.

By the way, if you want into the site early, use the username and password "paalpha".

People Aggregator [Official site]

After watching, I still didn't know what People Aggregator does, so I added some helpful subtitles. Enjoy!

Think you could do better? Remix this video with Jumpcut.

Marc's PeepAgg intro [.mov file]
Marc Canter's People Aggregator, snarked [Jumpcut remix]

Yahoo blogger Jeremy Zawodny was the first to call out Canter. Canter replied with a barely readable rebuttal. His defense: Hey, you e-mailed me once, it's only fair.

Now the spam debate is snowballing. Mild-mannered Sean Bonner, founder of the Metroblogging network, says that Canter tried to spam his entire staff. Hard to believe all those recipients once e-mailed Canter, says Bonner. We've got a clear-cut case of spam.

Marc, buck up and tell yourself, "I can make friends without spam."

And then take a class in communication, 'cause damn, that shit is whack.

Opt-Out 2.0: Making Social Software Less Annoying [Jeremy Zawodny]
Yes - indeed we're inviting people in now [Marc Canter]
Spam by any other name... [Sean Bonner]