Dealing With the Eventual Collapse of Social Networks 370
taskforce writes "There are good reasons to think web services like Facebook won't be around forever. If Facebook ever were to go down there would be potentially huge costs to its users. We can all take individual steps to protect our data and social network, but is there anything we can do to our economy to mitigate the costs of the failure of these services? The Red Rock looks at the role open source, open standards, consumer cooperatives, and enterprise reform can play. The author concludes that all is not lost, and that there's a lot we can do to reduce both the cost and frequency of failure."
His suggestions are pretty radical: "The first is draw up an Open Data Bill and pass it into law. This would (where applicable) mandate the use of open standards by firms, and also mandate that all data held about a user is downloadable by that user, in an open standard. ... The second is to reform the corporate structure of larger companies to include some directors elected by consumers, rather than just shareholders. Not all the directors, like in the Cooperative Group, and not even a majority, but just a small portion of the board — say one third."
Facebook *and* Google (Score:5, Informative)
Before the onslaught of a slew of "and nothing was lost" comments inspired by a mention only of social networks and Facebook, the Forbes article (as you can tell if you hover over it) is talking about any behemoth and specifically singles out Google and Facebook. The article title is actually "Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years".
It's also not talking about a total disappearance:
there are good reasons to think both might be gone completely in 5 â" 8 years. Not bankrupt gone, but MySpace gone.
So not quite the desolation that people are thinking. But if we're worried, why not look at what happened with Alta Vista or Geocities and go from there...
Re:Friend-face (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, and I have to say, I can't really see that the economic effect would be that great either (impact on any dot.com 2.0 bubble aside). If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, just how would that have any large effect on the economy? Even Zynga isn't totally relying on Facebook and nobody has shops that only operate through Facebook either to the best of my knowledge.
Re:Friend-face (Score:5, Informative)
Besides, Facebook has allowed you to download all your data in XML format for years from the bottom of the "account settings" window. Google later added that feature to Google+ as well. So it's not really a technology problem... of the people who actually care about any of that data, you're never going to get more than a tiny fraction of the people to actually download it and back it up properly.
Re:Friend-face (Score:4, Informative)
Household current should be 230v AC, you American prat. </euro-humor>
I think you'll find that, in the UK at least, household current can be anything up to 13 amperes. Household voltage must be 230 VAC (+10% -6%).