Brij Singh’s Blog

There is a good debate going on around the real deal of data ownership and how far businesses should go in facilitating the export of user data. I have two issues with pundits who are getting all passionate about “user should own the data”. First relates to online service’s basic value promise to the user and second is about the actual definition of user.

It all started with when upstart photo sharing service Zoomr wanted to dip into Flickr’s rich meta data repository. I like Flickr because they build photo management around collaboration and sharing ideas. Community building and designing tools which facilitate that is hard. For every successful community website you can find 100s which failed in the same domain.

Community is based on trust and transparency. Good API which allows data portability is one way in which service shows its commitment to the trust. It’s a nice thing to have for any web service. User is using Flickr because it provides good photo sharing service and won’t stop using it because it doesn’t go extra distance to facilitate data export to some other webservice that user happens to be using.

If Flickr had promised backup service then user has all the right to expect that rich data portability functionality. They should provide data portability if their broader user community is asking for this. This request is coming from competition and not from any vocal consumer community.

Second issue is related to the very definition of user in this context. It’s not clearly defined. User as a term is getting misused here. If not checked carefully this term can go the way of “green”, “poverty” and other such agenda hiding terms. When user uses Flickr to store and share photos then she is a user. When same pictures are used in their blogs to enhance the stickiness of the blog they are acting with some “motive”.

Now motive could be commercial (dollar earnings from Google Ads) or purely reputational (look how I see the world!). It’s in this type of use data portability becomes more than just user empowerment issue. It facilitates business building for that “user”. User stops being user and become an entrepreneur. So real transaction is between Flickr, Zoomr and “User Inc”.

If Zoomr want’s to use “User Inc” asset then they should request “User Inc” not Flickr. Whereas for Flickr this should be a product management feature allocation issue not some quest for the higher ground.

In the end I think Flickr’s offer of viral data sharing license is a smart move. This moves GPL like licensing into the data domain.

And why not, in Web2.0 world your data is your source code !