How Safe is Your Social Media Investment?

Image representing Pownce as depicted in Crunc...

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.