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A fork in the road - dangers of web services

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Lashiec:
As users will become wiser of web services and more of these will be bought up / close down - will this ultimately undermine confidence in web services? What guarantees should be in place? Should the webservice become open source or an read only archive be created when it will no longer be supported? It shows that the webservice industry is still growing up in my opinion.
-justice (November 25, 2008, 03:57 AM)
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Simple solution: Provide the means to actually backup all the data you have into the service, or design the frontend for the data in such way you can backup the data manually (that is, using the tools most browsers have at hand).

What is funny is that this is the first time I hear about these services, just now they're closing ;D. And by looking at what they offer, it's no wonder they're saying bye-bye: I Want Sandy looks it does the same service as Remember the Milk, and Stikkit performs tasks that can be achieved with Remember the Milk as well :P

I wonder why Twitter bought the company though, perhaps they want to use microblogging as a mean to manage tasks?

Carol Haynes:
Simple method is the option of automatically two way sync local files with your online files!

Paul Keith:
It seems related to all online services Paul.
Cause any service can close their doors.
Xdrive is as well as some other different online services that I was checking out and deleted their bookmark when they had a 'no longer available' note for it's page.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/10/mediamaxthelinkup-closes-its-doors/

For instance.

I just recently backed up my Gmail and will be on a regular basis because of this apparent danger.
-cmpm (November 26, 2008, 06:57 AM)
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That's true but I'm just pointing out that the examples being used are unrelated to what's mostly being discussed here. Had the example been Xdrive then yes, you could say stuff like online sync and choice of export and even private data makes sense.

Oh and Lashiec, Remember the Milk is sooo overrated. :p

I want Sandy and Stikkit actually are fundamentally different though as with most task based programs, they share something in common.

I want Sandy is much more simpler and more designed for pure e-mail users without the hassle and bussle of Remember the Milk. It actually gained a niche base but as with most e-mail centric services, you're not going to get much more interest than that.

Stikkit on the other hand is more of a notetaker than a pure To-do list on minimalistic steroids like Remember the Milk. You could say it's an intelligent/stupid auto-configuring notepad. The kind you would be annoyed with when MS Word auto-capitalizes your text and you have to look for the options when you just want to type in texts.

The system was obviously not going to get many users precisely because of the fear of these features but for people who can cope with it, there's certainly few simpler programs both online and offline that serves that need. The automation process combined with the tagging process was just something you'd expect that a person dissatisfied with Google Notebooks would want. It's just like a cruder Latex that rather than make you type the text and format it later, lets you type the text and auto-formats your text into a to do list, a reminder and whatever new syntax the service had added since I tried it.

Here's a more detailed article from someone who's fully explored the features:

http://daringfireball.net/2006/11/stikkit

40hz:
Not only is it a valid concern, but it's a business model.

This is one of the reasons why people like me are extremely reluctant to use these (often) free web services.. the prospect of them closing up shop and leaving you and your data in limbo seems quite high -- and it seems like it's often part of the business model.

Basically a company creates a web service and get as many people using it as possible by keeping it free.  [as a side note, make sure to call it "In Beta" forever so no one can complain about anything] They don't worry about profits yet.  Then at some point they say we have all these users, now is there a way to make a profit on it -- via advertising or whatever.  If not, then just close up shop and move on.  And the user is out of luck.
-mouser (November 25, 2008, 05:37 AM)
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Offering your product/service for free is not a business model. If there is no sale, there is no business.

Giving something away to establish credibility, or to identify a new market, is one thing. But I think that is also the major flaw in most web-based "business" plans. Companies offering these services seem to forget that the willingness of someone to pay for something is one of the best reality checks available for how well your product or service meets a genuine need. If people are willing to "do without" if they have to pay you for something, then your offering is not addressing a real need.

I once heard an anecdote about a guy who inherited some money and used it to start his own business. He hired some excellent people, rented nice office space, and got the best equipment available. Once he was all set up, he invited his old Business School professor to come visit. When the elderly professor was escorted into the new CEO's office he looked around at the artwork and state of the art computer setup.

"So what do you think of my new business," the CEO said.

"I don't know. Who are your customers," the professor asked.

"Well, we don't actually have any yet," said the CEO. "We're just starting up."

"Then you don't have a business yet," the professor said.

"Then what do you call all of this," the CEO said, waving his hand around the room.

"A lease," the old man said, with a sad little smile.

 ;)

Paul Keith:
Well most web service business models that are free revolve around the model of attract lots of users -> sell to big companies who gets suckered into your brand -> run away with the cash as big businesses find out they can't monetize much out of the service -> wait for said service to be screwed up by the business out of desperation to gain money -> release new and improved service under a new brand so... the old man is obviously living in the dinosaur age of business, I think? :p

Btw from the same site linked earlier, here's an interesting article regarding this:

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2008/11/25/dumbing_down_the_cloud.html

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