And this is really where I have an issue with people posing the proprietary nature of Facebook, Google+, Twitter, et al as "A Problem".
People throw their content into these services, time and again. Often doing so as they're suffering whatever pain we hypothesize is implicit in leaving a prior service. (However much pain it did or did not cause, to have everyone's stuff locked up in a MySpace silo, it did not stop anyone from putting all their stuff right back into Facebook's silo.)
And they do this in other contexts: no-one much frets about proprietary saved-game file formats. Or the release of new console platforms that end support for entire libraries of games. So clearly there's a line.
And it seems a reasonable one to draw. Because who really cares about their old saved games, or a game they hadn't played, or mobile app they hadn't so much as launched, in months?
It's certainly nice as things approach the open/internet ideal. But there's clearly an entire class of computing where people do cost/benefit considerations with an emphasis on immediate entertainment value, rather than long-term computing value.
And people have repeatedly demonstrated a desire to treat social networks more like consoles than even mobile platforms, let alone PC computing platforms.
So why do geeks persist in seeing "A Problem" here? Let alone a problem that, if solved, would garner any attention for having presented a solution?
People throw their content into these services, time and again. Often doing so as they're suffering whatever pain we hypothesize is implicit in leaving a prior service. (However much pain it did or did not cause, to have everyone's stuff locked up in a MySpace silo, it did not stop anyone from putting all their stuff right back into Facebook's silo.)
And they do this in other contexts: no-one much frets about proprietary saved-game file formats. Or the release of new console platforms that end support for entire libraries of games. So clearly there's a line.
And it seems a reasonable one to draw. Because who really cares about their old saved games, or a game they hadn't played, or mobile app they hadn't so much as launched, in months?
It's certainly nice as things approach the open/internet ideal. But there's clearly an entire class of computing where people do cost/benefit considerations with an emphasis on immediate entertainment value, rather than long-term computing value.
And people have repeatedly demonstrated a desire to treat social networks more like consoles than even mobile platforms, let alone PC computing platforms.
So why do geeks persist in seeing "A Problem" here? Let alone a problem that, if solved, would garner any attention for having presented a solution?