Rant ahead.
I have an old Yahoo email address, where I keep (or better kept) old emails for reference purposes. Mostly for nostalgic reasons. From dotcom times. From 1999 or 2000. None of it mission-critical.
Gone. I logged into Yahoo Mail the other day and was greeted with a smug everything’s deleted message, asking me if I’d like to re-activate my account.
Granted. I only logged in once every six months or less. But they could have sent me a couple of warnings on the alternate email I listed.
It also shows that there isn’t much Yahoo-wide interaction, ‘cos if they would have looked across to Flickr they would have seen that the same ID is still in use.
For me that’s the huge downside of online apps: corporations decide at will what they can do with your content.
It’s happened to me before by smaller companies as well. My old blog disappeared into Nirvana. Cos I didn’t get around to downloading the data fast enough.
I just read Seth Godin’s post on monopolies:
Welcome to a new century. In the new century, we all have the same goal:
1. Establish a direct and positive relationship with the end user.
I feel that tech. companies are using “user generated content” as a way to build their business, but forget that there are real people on the other side.
Keep going down this road. And I’ll move on.
Jahuuuuu.
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