For some time I’ve been following the Solid project by Tim Berners-Lee. This November his startup launched the Solid privacy platform. Enabling organizations to build applications on the principle that the user owns and controls their data.

The core idea is that the data isn’t owned by an organization but by users themselves. Users have their data stored in “Pods” (Personal Online Data Stores). Applications can request access to specific data within a Pod. This concept is a huge shift away from how most of the web has evolved. As most of the web has become one big data collection machine where organizations “own” data.

The project is open source but since November there is an enterprise version available for use by large organizations.

The whole project is super interesting to follow. Time will tell if it will succeed. But if it will it’s a major step for online data privacy. Regardless, I am intrigued by the concept.

And if someone could pull off reinventing the Web, who better than the inventor himself?