TechCrunch posted an article this past weekend on the startup Blippy and how Amazon is insisting that the company stop collecting user purchase data and erase all data that was previously collected. The article got me thinking about our personal data streams, the implicit web and ownership. Many investors and technorati have previously blogged and talked about the rise of platforms that capture data based on our implicit actions on the web, so no need to rehash that here.
A question worth discussing is who owns your data stream. Wait a minute, don’t I own my tweets on Twitter, status updates on Facebook, photos on Flickr, emails on Gmail, bookmarks on Delicious and reviews on Yelp? Not necessarily and define “own”. Well, does the ownership lie with the user who generated the data, the company that captured it or someone else? If it’s the company that captured it, does the user have rights to the data and can the user share the data without the company’s permission? These are all important questions that can affect future implicit web innovation and I’m not sure we have a good answer to any of them.
In the case of Blippy, if users gave permission to collect their data wouldn’t that suffice for Amazon? Well actually no, probably not. I haven’t read Amazon’s terms of service, but I could almost guarantee data generated by users is property of the company. This is particularly true of companies with advertising based revenue models. Google’s success shows how valuable data can be. Google is actually an interesting case to take a closer look at. In their terms of service, the company claims all content created by you is your property and not the company’s. Technically, Google is licensing the content from you. So, I own the videos that I upload to YouTube and emails that I send with Gmail, but Google monetizes my content, doesn’t share the revenue and restricts access to my data or some of my data?
I don’t see a good solution to this problem any time soon. Many would argue that data ownership isn’t a problem; it’s a byproduct of the implicit web. I disagree. It is a problem and with the proliferation of mobile devices, rise of the real-time web and explosion of implicit user data the problem will be exacerbated in years to come. As a user I can accept if I don’t own my data and companies are making money from it. My issue is when the playing field is not level and incumbents create walled gardens. My vote is open and free access to ALL of my data. I may not get to own my data in the long run, but I don’t have to support companies that are not open. Let innovation happen.
