> One possibility might be if social networks, one they reach a certain size (say >10 million users) be required to put all their public data on standard APIs (

> One possibility might be if social networks, one they reach a certain size (say >10 million users) be required to put all their public data on standard APIs (such as RSS feeds) under terms that allow anyone to re-use them. I'm genuinely glad that someone had made this point of putting public data accessible to other people after reaching critical mass. I'm equally sad that it might never happen. PS: There are other discussions going on having a common standard/protocol for social media communications so that it can be picked up by anyone like an email provider without locking out the people using a particular service. I'm now wondering what is stopping this from happening. FB and other private monopolies can be forced to adopt the protocol and data from them can be shared between other services like FB. How FB would react to this is whole another matter.