Are you taking Facebook and LinkedIn for granted? If so, it’s time to get your head out of the cloud and start thinking about how you are going to preserve years of social data that you’ve been sharing on your favorite social networks. And just in case you don’t believe me, you should read this article about a recent MySpace foible. It seems that MySpace may be plotting its own early demise.
Think about Facebook or LinkedIn ten years from now. The traffic is dwindling and your favorite social media website – the one you use for your business – decides to undertake a redesign.
What if, during the redesign, Facebook takes away the ability to create groups and build pages? On top of that, they delete all of your posted data from the past ten years – no more photos, no more videos, no more wall posts, no more comments, no more Likes, and no more group or page information. It’s all gone. Wouldn’t that just leave a bad taste in your mouth?
Well, that’s what happened at MySpace. And how did MySpace handle it? By shrugging its shoulders and saying,
We know that this is upsetting to some but it gives us a chance to really concentrate on creating a new experience for discovery and expression.
They apologized for limiting the features, not getting rid of the personal data. And that stings.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see a mass exodus of MySpace users. Why should they stick around? There’s no incentive any more if they feel like everything they’ve done for the past few years is lost. And if you think it can’t happen anywhere else, you’d better be prepared. Start backing up your own data as soon as you can – just in case.
