I wanted to follow up a previous post with some additional comments. This past week, a popular social bookmarking service called Ma.gnolia went down and lost all of their users’ data. Their users were understandably angry and frustrated. Citizen Garden did an interview with the guy who created Ma.gnolia and he brings up a question that I alluded to – we have a lot of content – a lot of data – stored all over the place online – what’s our backup strategy?
Over the past few years, a major paradigm shift has occurred in how (and where) our data is stored. We’ve had data online for quite a while – ever since the first “guestbook” applications appeared on peoples’ GeoCities home pages (usually right next to the animated “Under Construction” GIF).
I’m not going to discuss identity theft here – there are already enough posts about that topic. I’d like to discuss the social and professional aspects of our personal data that’s stored online, and the risks involved.