Web 2.0 expiration date, Day 2

  A couple of thoughts.
  1. I'm revitalizing my scripts that backup Flickr. I had them working a few years ago and then for some reason let them fall into disrepair. Not good. When I upload a picture to Flickr it should automatically be backed up within the hour to a local hard drive and to my S3 archive.
  2. Whenever I start this thread (I've been doing it for years) someone asks about my Disqus comments. They're right. That's a Web 2.0 service. I don't have a backup of the comments people post.
  If I wanted to switch I could probably manage it so that the old posts keep their Disqus comments and the new ones get the new brand. But that doesn't help in the event that Disqus shuts down, or adds a new term to the user agreement that I can't abide by, or is bought by a company I don't trust.
  However, we would be totally covered if Disqus had the option to store the text of the comments in a structured format (XML or JSON, I don't care) in an S3 archive that I give it permission to write to. That way I don't have to do anything to be backed up. Such a simple idea, and what a marketing advantage they would offer over every other way of writing for the web.
  Lock-in always becomes a big issue for users, in every cycle. We're approaching that point in Web 2.0. Imho.
    Sidebar: Wouldn't it be great if tech bloggers who made fortunes from Web 2.0 applied some of their cred to helping users avoid lock-in?
    It's so sad that they often do things to enforce lock-in, trying to close off our way out of the silos. (I'm thinking of the RSS is Dead theory which is largely an invention of TechCrunch.)
    Surely they understand that if vendors went the other way and added support for RSS, we'd be more able to get our data out of their silos.