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		<title>Dear Fred: Re your users' content</title>
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		<outline created="Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:59:12 GMT" pgfnum="11140" text="VCs today seem to me much like product managers at big tech companies. I &lt;a href=&quot;http://scripting.com/stories/2012/07/15/dontTalkAboutVcs.html&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt; about this last week, and it was echoed in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/business/venture-capital-firms-once-discreet-learn-the-promotional-game.html?_r=1&quot;&gt;piece&lt;/a&gt; yesterday in the NYT. "></outline>
		<outline created="Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:00:05 GMT" pgfnum="11141" text="Today's VC/PMs are exploring a set of open formats and protocols known as Web 2.0. Various combinations and permutations on blogging software. That's how I see all the major services. Those that don't fit the mold are re-shaping themselves to fit it. Google-Plus is a good example of that."></outline>
		<outline created="Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:01:10 GMT" pgfnum="11142" text="However this model doesn't do anything to safe-up the user's data long-term. When companies are acquired or go out of business, the users' data often goes with it. We saw this weekend a &lt;a href=&quot;http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/07/22/twitter-owned-posterous-loses-multiple-databases-service-down-for-2-hours/&quot;&gt;preview&lt;/a&gt; of this with Posterous going down. Someday Friendfeed will be taken offline by &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/facebook-acquires-friendfeed/&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt;. Think about it, the two founders of Friendfeed aren't even at Facebook anymore. When there's a technical problem, or Facebook shifts priorities, who there will care about that archive?"></outline>
		<outline created="Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:02:28 GMT" pgfnum="11143" text="I'm not innocent here. I started weblogs.com many years ago, and when the management of UserLand gave me responsibility for all the sites, a couple of years after I had left the company, the server I had allocated couldn't handle the load, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/06/63856&quot;&gt;poof&lt;/a&gt; there went the sites. UserLand was a small company, on its way to going out of business, and didn't even get acquired, so that isn't an excuse. The company just couldn't handle it. And I promise you the users did not understand, and took it personally. (Why? Blog-type content &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; personal. Users rightly see it as their web-body. If you delete it, no matter how it happens or what your motives, that's heavy.)"></outline>
		<outline created="Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:03:31 GMT" pgfnum="11144" text="I ask this question of Fred Wilson in a friendly way, because I know he likes discussions, and he especially likes discussions that challenge his business model. He's a leading VC, a blogger, and outspoken on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/07/in-defense-of-free.html&quot;&gt;topic&lt;/a&gt; of free vs paid software. "></outline>
		<outline created="Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:17:59 GMT" pgfnum="11146" text="The question -- what about the archives of the users of the companies you back? What will happen to their tweets, blogs, podcasts, check-ins, discussion threads, Scrabble games, photos, etc in the years to come? How much have you thought about that? What are your plans?"></outline>
		<outline created="Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:10:05 GMT" pgfnum="11145" text="And if it turns out that this is something the VC community hasn't thought about or planned for, what are you prepared to do to safeguard users work against acquisition or failure of the companies?"></outline>
		<outline created="Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:18:40 GMT" pgfnum="11147" text="Note: The discussion software here is created and run by a Wilson-backed company, Disqus."></outline>
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