April 21st, 2008
Great Services will Reframe the Ownership Debate
by Joshua Porter | 
5 Comments
Mark Sigal, writing on Gigaom, says what’s been on my mind lately in his piece The Social Map is All About Me:
“regardless of where my content and data originate, I have a right to pull this data into MY sandbox, a sandbox where I track my threads, organize my media, filter my views and push my content wherever and however I please. While this position seems to raise a virtual middle finger to almost every service provider’s terms of service, it should not be viewed as heretical.”
Heretical, indeed. It’s quite odd that Mark has to describe this as heretical, even though he’s simply talking about his own content. He uploads a picture on a photo-sharing site, and he wants to be able to share it on even other sites, maybe his blog. Smart services have APIs with which they allow other services to transfer data in and out. Stingy services throttle this ability to try to keep that information on the site, within the confines of the domain.
We need a new frame for discussion surrounding ownership on the web. We need this issue to be less heretical and more commonplace. I think this will happen as more and more services like Flickr, Twitter, Dopplr, and Ma.gnolia open up their content and quietly make awesome services with robust APIs focused on specific activities and social objects, without trying to create the next destination network.
I definitely agree with the fact that if you create it it’s yours and you should be able to do with it what you see fit, but my question is how do the sites that expose the awesome API cover the cost of their own resources and eventually make money? I understand something like Flickr that provides a limited free service, and then a for-pay alternative that makes the service more useful, but how does Flickr expect to make money? Or Ma.gnolia? Are these services simply advertising ploys to demonstrate what a development company can do? If so, they’re not doing a very good job!
Oops..I meant how does Twitter expect to make mony, not Flickr, which I’m sure makes money through the Yahoo application bundle in addition to its subscriptions. More along those lines, is that the business model? Twitter and Ma.gnolia are just waiting for an internet-mogul buyout?
@Eric: Ahh, yes, the profit question. One thing that companies who don’t charge money and who try to build the biggest user base seem to assume is that if they get big enough, they’ll either get bought out or figure out how to make money at that point.
But is this really necessary for success? Couldn’t a company have an order of magnitude (or two orders of magnitude) smaller audience while making a profit and still be considered successful? I think so.
It really depends on your strategy. I think there is room for many strategies to work…
That said, I find it fascinating that people are making money on Twitter (e.g. the makers of Twitterrific) with their 2nd-order software. This suggests to me that Twitter is, at least in the short term, trying to simply build their user base at this point.
I sometimes wonder if, in contrast to the multi-million dot.bomb profit-making model, we are seeing the dawn of the web cottage industry: as long as Twitter, et al, cover their costs and makes a few thousand a year in disposable income for the operators, how is that different from, say, a clothes shop on your local high street, or a restaurant or a small chain of garages? The same applies to making music. Is there any reason why artists can’t make and sell music on the net to make a living wage rather than millions of dollars? It seems we’re all obsessed with fabulous wealth, when in reality it’s fine to make enough to buy an iPhone, go on holiday a couple of times a year, and pay off your mortgage by the time the kids leave home.
@Eric The revenue is an interesting and often-ignored point, and obviously a challenge for Chi.mp as we let you push out your stuff to wherever you want. For me the key is to find a way to build a business model where the retention of content is not the method for locking in long-term value.