Your content at risk: A credit crisis for the co-created web

There are reports that flickr may be in trouble. Well, it is owned by Yahoo, so maybe we shouldn't be too surprised.

When loic le meur (he of Seesmic fame) heard this he wondered outloud (on twitter) if he should start backing up his years of images.

This is the social web's equivalent of a failing bank scenario.

We have invested our content in it and now we're fearful that we might have been better off stashing it under our mattresses. We're worried if the bank fails, our investment disappears. (Image courtesy Travis Truman)

When we contribute content that we value, in the joint creation of a site such as blogger or flickr, we not only insist on retaining ownership of our content (traditional media companies really struggle with that bit), we need confidence that this content will be stored safely and not evaporate over night. Just as we do when we hand our cash to a bank.

In both cases we hope to create a little extra interest for ourselves along the way and recognise that our service provider has to find a way of making a return on their investment (the platform or bank) in return.

If Flickr were to fail, how would that change your online generosity?

Of course, Flickr would not be the first to disappear, taking our treasured content with it. But it would be the first co-created giant of the social media age to tank.

Imagine the holes it's sudden desctruction would leave across millions of websites and blogs... there would be one on this blogpost, for a start.

Is Flickr is too big to fail? Given the interconnectivity of the web, can anything which stores and shares be allowed to fail?

Perhaps it is time for a bail out strategy - time for a global institution to guarantee our content investments are protected, the assets safely transferred and made accessible to us in the event of failure - so we can reinvest them elsewhere if we choose.

There are some regulation issues opened up by this, such as, do you have to comply with T&Cs of the bail-out guardians in order to have your web service covered? Who gets to set the rules? etc

But without some kind of guarantor does the web face a credit crunch all of its own where we as investors of our content start becoming more wary about who we will lend it to.

Let's not underplay this. These loans are the very reason businesses from twitter to facebook, wikipedia to google can exist at all.

The web has grown through peer-to-peer content creation and distribution. We contribute on the understanding we can always get it back (which at least means access it online and share it with others).

As we increasingly rely on the cloud for our storage requirements, the providers of those clouds will have to come up with protection for lenders which include exit/bail-out strategies whether lightning strikes or financial storms come.

What kind of terms and conditions would restore your confidence as a contributor? What terms and conditions would you find acceptable as a platform creator?

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Deal making in the 21st Century

Seesmic's Loic Le Meur has posted about why Seesmic has acquired Twhirl (about the coolest of the many twitter clients emerging around the twitter ecosystem).
One line will stand out for those from the traditional world of media and traditional Mergers & Acquisitions deal doing.
"We got in touch entirely through using Twitter and Twhirl... how cool is that? Okay, we also used Skype a bit to close the deal..."
As I often say, if you want to adapt to survive in an environment, you have to live in it.
If you don't even know what Twitter, Twhirl and Seemic (even though it's still in closed alpha) are, take it as read you aren't living in the environment.
Come on in, the conversation is lovely.

Rich media? Think about enabling conversation

In previous posts I've wittered on about the how the 'rich media' fantasy of video leads us all too often back to being petit broadcasters - complete with a nasty dose of TV envy.
And I've bemoaned the fact that there is nothing available in video so far which replicates the ease of ability for all to contribute, with the low technical barriers that blog or forum-style postings allow.
I'm coming to the conclusion that the most helpful definition of your digital trickery is not how 'rich' it is but how conversation enabling.
Twitter seems the most conversation-enabling network we're currently witnessing.
No coincidence that it's heavily and robustly text based (though you can point to video, images, sound and all that 'rich' goodness of course).
Seesmic (which I have only just signed up for) appears to be the best stab yet at the video equivalent. That was my initial thought - and one which Ivan Pope - a longer time user - confirms. "It is like Twitter with video, has its own community feel, very addictive generally. See you there!"
What I like about this is that it enables real-time conversation, through video. It has its issues, not least of which is the fact that no-one dare leave it on for long for fear of burning out their harddrives - which means an inevitable lean towards asynchronous communication (ie not real-time and same-time). Early days.

Anyway. Just to crystalise this easy (technical low barriers) -hard (technically high barriers), broadcast-conversation landscape, here's a very simple (and terribly drawn) graph (see above).

I reckon the closer to the top right corner, the better the fit with the networked world.

A traditional TV channels would sit in the bottom left corner. Twitter is quite close to the top right - as are all the best social networks.

Where would you place your favourites or what you are working on?

Bonus: Ivan Pope on how 'everything is falling apart' and coming together again. Apologies for the out-of-synch sound. Think it's part of the joy of mp4 on my N73!