6 ms·
".. forcing competitors to make their own data exportable to Facebook would in all likelihood benefit Facebook" What competitors is the author even talking abo
by NickBusey 8y ago
".. forcing competitors to make their own data exportable to Facebook would in all likelihood benefit Facebook"
What competitors is the author even talking about here? There are, as far as I'm aware, essentially no competitors left to Facebook anymore.
That being the case, I'm not sure that statement is correct at all. On the contrary, it seems like if FB were required to offer an easily exportable data format, that other services would pop up overnight to try and lure people away from FB onto their (hopefully) more privacy conscious platforms. It would also lower the bar for people to make the switch to something else, as they know their friends can switch just as easily without losing their data.
I agree with the rest of the points of the article, but I don't see how data portability can be anything but a net positive for the consumer.
- nradov 8y agoThere are several active competitors depending on how you define the market. WeChat, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service#Largest_social_networking_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service#Larg...
- NickBusey 8y agoThe 3 key features that most people I know who still use Facebook are Photo Sharing, Event Organizing, and Messaging. The things you listed do one or two, but I don't think any of them do all 3.
- gberger 8y agoI'm pretty sure WeChat does all 3...
- ben509 8y agoIf company A is selling hot dogs and ice cream, and B is selling hot dogs and C is selling ice cream, does that mean A has no competitors?
- nradov 8y agoBy that standard you could claim that the Honda Civic has no competitors because no other vehicle has its particular combination of features.
- intopieces 8y agoWeChat does all three of those, plus payments and food ordering. Basically everything Facebook wishes they could do, WeChat does it for about 1B people.
- dymk 8y agoWeChat doesn't have a significant presence in Western markets, and Facebook doesn't have a significant presence in China. They don't really compete with each other, even though they provide a lot of the same features.
- return0 8y agoDating sites
- dane-pgp 8y agoIf "data portability" were interpreted widely enough, it would mean that people using other social networks could have a "proxy" Facebook account which is automatically synched with their main (non-Facebook) account. Ideally, any posts that your Facebook account could see would be fetchable by your non-FB account, and anything you post on your non-FB account would be re-posted on FB for you. This way, as far as your friends are concerned, you are a normal Facebook user, but you would never actually browse the site (or use the app). That would allow competition in how the UI works, but also less ad revenue for Facebook (and more engineering work, which they would presumably claim is unfair).
- coldacid 8y agoThere are still ten or so of us on Diaspora.
- throwaway284721 8y ago> That being the case, I'm not sure that statement is correct at all. On the contrary, it seems like if FB were required to offer an easily exportable data format, that other services would pop up overnight to try and lure people away from FB onto their (hopefully) more privacy conscious platforms. It would also lower the bar for people to make the switch to something else, as they know their friends can switch just as easily without losing their data. The problem with this is that it presupposes a certain data-format, that doesn't allow for innovation. How exactly would you export facebooks data to twitter or vice versa? For a start, facebook doesn't have a character limit, twitter does. Twitter threads can be nested infinitely, facebook's can't, etc.