Web Apps, the New Lock-in, and the Opposite of Backup

Over at MNteractive.com, we’ve been talking about how to close your MySpace account. Leaving sites like MySpace and Friendster should be straight forward – simply delete me. Disconnecting me from all my ‘friends’. No biggy. Not letting me do that is both a privacy issue and a Google juice problem.

Sites like YouTube and Flicker are slightly different – I put stuff I find valuable there, but I’ve got a local copy of all that. No biggy.

The biggy is with sites like Amazon, eBay, BaseCamp, Stikipad, browser-only email, and other collaborative sites where the assets only exist on the service’s servers. What happens to my assets when I want to leave?

I see that there was export functionality, but ‘this feature is currently unavailable’ – Darren Barefoot

Ouch.

In addition to regularly backing up the important information on your local machines – the same goes for all the web-only services, what do we call this…a ‘back-down’?

More:

“…I’m not spending lots of my time building anything in a system where it is locked up, I can’t take it out, and am at their mercy on rate hikes and such.” – Dave Slusher

Babe Ruth: 1330 Strike Outs – 714 Home Runs

Steve is wondering how to break through the din of our post-scarcity world.

I see the lowering of the barriers to publishing very much an opportunity. An opportunity to move faster, publish faster, and continue to lower the barriers for getting interesting applications out to the world. Evan says this is Obvious.

The photo Steve used reminded me that Babe Ruth struck out nearly twice as many times as he hit a home run.

Thing is, getting a hit (being Dugg, Slashdotted, etc) actually hurts. It can take down your server and give you crazy bandwidth bills. The long tail doesn’t accommodate spikes very well.

I’m good with consistently getting on base. Keeps the game moving.

UPDATE 3 Nov 2006:

“The mistake bloggers often make (actually, all marketers make sooner or later) is the believe that being popular is its own reward.” – Seth Godin

Be Progressive, B-E Progressive

On my daily walk last night, I saw a campaign sign for the Independent candidate running in the 5th Congressional District.

Odd, I thought this race was a foregone conclusion.

Then I find this bit from Mark over at Norwegianity:

“..the Cities hoi polloi desperately don’t want Ellison in Congress. He doesn’t owe them squat, and is likely to be a little hard of hearing when the corporations and mega-non-profits come calling. It’s been a long time since I thought public radio or TV deserved any public money. Sleep with pigs, wake up smelling bad.”

Ouch. Though, it makes me wonder if the blue, italic “Be Progressive” on her website isn’t product placement.

The notion that independent candidates might be more attractive to corporations makes me giggle a little. Then, the cynical side of me says it’s the only way the party will get enough traction to win more than 10% of the races.

Ze Frank vs. RocketBoom – What Counts?

It’s great that Andrew got on my TiVo, great that he’s on phones, getting the traditional media comfortable with alternative distribution methods. Andrew deserves our thanks for going down this road (it’s not one that sounds like fun to me).

To his credit, I can’t tell the difference between RocketBoom and the news from local affiliates. So, it must be working. But, I don’t want smaller, shorter television, I want 3 minutes of interestingness.

What’s it matter if RB has 10x the audience if Ze’s fans buy him bling duckies and dress up their vacuum cleaners?

“Should we even care about eyeballs? I don’t. I care about my audience, but my show ends on March 17th, 2007 whether I have one eyeball or a million. Given the current state of web metrics, talking about eyeballs seems to create more risk than value anyway…..In the absence of sane metrics, we’re already repeating the mistakes that turned television into what it is today.” – Ze Frank

And later:

“[Ze] Frank says that Baron’s numbers are inflated and make it difficult for he and other video bloggers to sell advertisements with much lower numbers to offer. …. Ze Frank and many other video podcasters ought to be able to make a living doing what they are doing.” – Marshall Kirkpatrick

Uhhhhh, Mr. Kirkpatrick, there are many other ways to make a living than advertising. Sure, none of them are fashionable, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

There are two problems with metrics:

  1. Measuring the right thing is hard – and different for everyone
  2. What gets measured gets attention – whether or not it’s the right thing

Studio 60 – Best Show on Television

Sure, I’ve probably said this about ever Aaron Sorkin production…save West Wing (it just didn’t click with me). The writing in all his programs is superb, the characters – real, the situations – idealized without being unrealistic, drama without cheese or melodarama. Life.

Though, if history is any indication – Studio 60 won’t be on for much longer. Perhaps that’s one of the benefits – the need to savor each one because there aren’t that many.

Like really good, imported Belgian chocolate.

Related: Rex feels the same way

RE: What this Website Looks Like

Ben has some recommendations for wordpress publishers using the Hemingway theme (like I am of this writing).

While I agree with some of his suggestions – the undercurrent of the entire discussion is that visual presentation doesn’t really matter – let alone main pages.

Search engines shouldn’t index the main page of a blog (cause it changes lots) – only the links off it, so the likelihood of someone coming by the home page via a search engine should be low – Google et. al should be pointing to the category archive or permalinks.

Secondly, there’s a thing called RSS that delivers the web without a visual presentation. I read all my favorite and not so favorite websites through RSS (including Ben’s) – so I rarely see a what it looks like.

Between you and me, I’m a big fan of just trying on new themes. I’m doing this right now at the First Crack podcast and Working Pathways. When I find a few moments here and there, I’ll tweak the standard to more my liking or find an entire theme closer and repeat.

No, I’m not entirely happy with Hemingway – for some of the reasons Ben states. Yes, I’ve got some changes in the works – when will you see them…..maybe never. Especially if you’re reading this through the RSS feed.