No Data Portablity? Ok, We’ll Use FriendFeed

Is not it funny how creators of various web 2.0 tools give us the tools that they intend for one thing and eventually users find unexpected uses that the developers did not even think about? This happened with Twitter - everyone talked about microblogging and we started to use Twitter mostly as a communications tool and now the creators explain that the platform can't cope with the load because they never built it as a messenger tool.

The idea for this post arrived when I bumped into a FriendFeed thread initiated by Mike Fruchter where he suggested everyone to post our shiny and new Identi.ca URLs for all of us to be able to easier subscribe to each other over there as well - without search functionality it is twice as difficult as usually anyway. (Hey Robert, I have a feeling that someone grabbed Scobleizer faster than you again. Maybe developers should reserve such nicknames in advance and only grant them on a special request from the prominent web personality?)

Is it the first time that we practice this approach? Definitely no: last time it was for Plurk, now it's Identi.ca (with more to come, I'm sure). Sure, DataPortability may be a great idea with lots of supporters (and opponents, to be fair) and the smartest guys in the industry may continue working month after month to determine who exactly owns our friends and how we should be able (unable) to migrate from one service to another with a bunch of existing friends. No worries, we already have a simple solution that does not take much time and effort (let alone money) - it's FriendFeed and it really is amazing how many uses we already have for the relatively new tool.

So you don't let us migrate from Twitter and take all our friends with us to the new service (ok, not migrate maybe, just try out the alternative to see if it's any good)? We already know what to do: we just post our usernames with the new services to FriendFeed (and Twitter as well) and wait for email notifications of new subscribers who we are already connected with on FriendFeed. And we will still use existing services to connect with friends on their newly launched competitors. It may not be what the developers intended their services for but is not it dead simple?

Yes, Identi.ca does not even have the search functionality now and looking for friends could be a nightmare unless you actually enjoy pasting your friends' usual nicknames after the service URL in your browser address bar (and I strongly doubt anyone enjoys it). So we have quickly found a workaround this again, same as we did with Plurk.

Conclusion? It is absolutely no surprise that we will easily gather in the same closely knit circles in every new community launched. We have already found the way to migrate and never feel lonely in any new social network (no matter if it's only launched minutes ago). So maybe DataPortability working group should take a simpler approach?

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