How Safe is Your Social Media Investment?

Image by
via CrunchBase

Recently, our guest author, Devan Sabaratnam, wrote about the
shutting down of a service called I Want
Sandy. Today, Pownce announced
that they are shutting down the doors in two weeks time. This calls into
question how reliable it is for users to move their data online and whether it
is worth their time.

There is a certain level of irresponsibility involved in both these service
shutdowns. First, they only gave a two weeks window before the service shuts
down completely. Second, there is no email communication from both the companies
regarding the upcoming closure of their business. This is a surefire way to lose
the confidence of the users of web based services. The sad part of the two
service shutdowns is the fact that the founders are joining other well
established web based companies. Twitter is employing the founder of I Want
Sandy and Six Apart has bought Pownce. Both these companies make their living by
selling web based services. I am not sure if these companies thought about the
repercussions of such irresponsible shutdown on the users’ confidence when it
comes to web based services.

I want Sandy didn’t even offer an easy option to export data from their
service before it gets shutdown. You can read about the discussions that
followed this move on the Get
Satisfaction website. Pownce is trying to make people feel good by offering
an easy export option of the data. However, they are only allowing the users to
export the data they have uploaded into the Pownce webservice. They are not
offering an option to take
our friends with us.

When users move to web based services, they spend considerable amount of time
putting their data into the datacenters of the vendors. Even though the web
applications make life easier for the users, they do spend considerable amount
of their time putting the data inside those applications when they start up. In
some situations, where users pay for the internet access based on their
bandwidth usage, they also spend considerable amount of money into it. In the
case of social networking sites, users are not only putting their data on those
services, they also spend considerable amount of time making friends and
nurturing the relationships. This investment of their time in the social
networking sites, like Pownce, is totally irreplaceable. The web services that
are shutting down cannot compensate for the time spent on nurturing the
relationships. That is perfectly understandable. However, they could, at least,
allow the users to carry their friends with them to other social networking
sites. By not giving an option to the users to take their friends with them,
these sites are forcing the users to lose their entire social media investment.
This is not only unacceptable but also irresponsible.

Well, should users run away from using the web based applications? Is it
stupid to invest time making and nurturing relationships on such web based
social applications? No. Not at all. It is unwise to fall for any fear mongering
that accompanies such incidents. First, it is important that standards are
established for the data stored on the clouds. It is also important to make sure
that the stored data can be easily exported to one of the open formats. We,
evangelists and vendors, should work towards implementation of open standards
like OpenID, OAuth, Microformats, etc.. We should also educate users about the
importance of data ownership and data portability. It is crucial for the web
services vendors to come forward “pre-emptively” and implement the above said
standards. Only then, they can assure users who are skeptical about the value of
web based applications after seeing companies shut down almost overnight. It is
important that the vendors take all the necessary steps to protect the online
and social media investments of the users.

Don’t forget to read the post about the questions one should ask before trusting the data with a SaaS vendor and the SaaS Risk Reduction Series.

Related articles by
Zemanta

• It’s Official:
  Mashup Privacy Protocol OAuth Is Fair Game
• Biggest
  Battle Yet For Social Networks: You, Your Identity And Your Data On The Open
  Web
• Facebook
  Connect: Scary but good
• Pownce
  Shutting Down, Technology Sold To Six Apart
• Pownce is Gone and It’s Kevin Rose’s Fault
• Goodbye Pownce, I Hardly Used Ya
  
• Pownce Closes, Team Joins Six Apart
• Pownce Deadpooled, Team Moves To Six Apart