Plus: PubSubHubbub is a good idea too—it should prevent you from the risk of an “API bank run” (server crashing because all your users are getting their information back at once, fearing that the servers miht crash because of the announce of a run).

 Would Foursquare still post check-ins to this generic database of  > structured data? We wouldn’t do this automatically because check-in data is private and we wouldn’t post it to a public location without a user asking us to do it.  It would ce…

First, tell me who you are. This post hits right on the target that I have been deeply concerned with the last few months. There are so many companies out there currently whose sole purpose to existence is to mine as much information about me as possible, for the purpose of selling it to the highest bidder. The consumer of their services, me, has little or no effective control of what that data is, and how it’s used. This is unacceptable.

There are three companies that I am concerned with currently. Facebook, Google, and Global Rainmakers. The reasons vary, but are all privacy and liberty based.

Facebook’s inability to build and maintain an acceptable privacy policy, and their requirement for data that is not needed for the purpose of providing the service they offer, is well known at this point. My concerns are shared by many. My biggest concern is the feeling that they don’t care what I think about the matter.

Google’s data trove on everyone, and everything is scary enough, but add in there recent rethinking of the “Don’t be evil” policy, and the inability of anyone to affect the data that is held about them, is doubly so. The CEO’s recent comments regarding the expected necessity for teens to change their names on reaching their majority, in order to avoid association with parts of that data trove is a huge red flag for me.

And GRI. This dude is just plain evil. They are deliberately attempting to bring the Minority Report world to life, minus the precogs. And their CDO’s “warning” that if you are a person who would opt out of their system, you will be red flagged as if you were the worst of criminal offenders is both offensive and indicative of why these kinds of decisions should not be left to the corporate world. As one previous poster already stated, bait and switch tactics are just wrong.

One other major concern I have with all of these companies is that they are aware that they are targeting minors, and that the information gathered will cause those kids trouble later. And they seem to think that is not their problem.

So, again, I didn’t know who you were, prior to reading this article. But I do now. And I’ll be paying attention to your ideas. I like the way you think, in this case. And I’m frankly a lot more comfortable using Flickr, at this point.

Josh

Too bad that there is no online Flickr backup solution that lets you mirror your complete photostream (including all comments etc.) locally or on a server.

And I hate to say this to everyone commenting, looking for a packaged Flickr backup solution, but here: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=flickr+backup

That said there are tons of tools for doing backups, checking in the app garden, or the help forums for one that fits your exact needs. Additionally there are 3rd party services built on the API, like backupify that do something similar.

With Flickr you can get out, via the API, every single piece of information you put into the system.

Love the API and the sentiment, but I think we can go one step further, which is to say, non-technical users should be able to get their information out of a system.

In the case of Flickr it would be nice if there was a page a photographer could go to to easily download all their data.

If a Microsoft Word user had to learn the VB Script API to “export” their data it wouldn’t really be a complete solution.

That said, love Flickr. You guys rock.

It’s nice that I can do this through the API but I’m not a programmer – I’m a photographer. Imagine if I lost all my photos and could only get them back by downloading each one from the All Sizes page. Ouch.

Love it! I’ve been trying to explain to business types that the number of users canceling their accounts likewise has no bearing on whether what you’re doing is the right thing to do. Bait-and-switch is wrong, even if no one notices.

Amen. I hate to bring up the inevitable, but right from the beginning the thing that creeped me out about F*bk was that they asked me for information about myself and my contacts that subsequently never appeared anywhere on the site. It was only for profiling me, not for improving my experience and once entered it was no longer mine – I couldn’t take it back. That’s not acceptable.