This article has a lot of great points about private vs. open, but one I disagree with is "First, it's hard, if not impossible, to monetize private communication."

The obvious example that comes to mind here is Gmail. People still click on the targeted keyword ads next to their email, and I haven't seen that Gmail has started making anyone's email public yet.

That billion dollars Facebook made last year was mostly from those personalized display ads, which can easily target a person based on the ad profile of them facebook builds without anyone (read: the outside world) ever seeing their name/employer/statuses/etc. I can't imagine that the revenue from selling the status stream to Google for some multiple of $15 million comes close to the billion they're making from display ads, or the PR mess they've gotten themselves in.

But we have no clue (AFAIK) that Google makes a profit on Gmail, at least in the consumer market. Google Apps for Enterprise makes them some money but I think their main purpose is to disrupt existing players (cough MSFT cough).

I find GMail ads more relevant than search ads and have spent more money in purchases from GMail ads. I am just one datapoint though, and Google probably will not publish relevant statistics.

I want portability and I prefer services that offer some kind of API with which I can manage my data, or at the very least, a usable RSS feed. Google is pretty great about this. I felt burned when Yahoo closed Launchcast after I'd been using it for years.

But again, it feels like one of those things only YC/slashdot readers really care about. For instance, a few weeks ago, the CIO of our company had suggested one of those bookshelf sites to me. So I did a little research and emailed him a couple reviews I had found, pointing out that I would prefer a site with greater data portability.

His response (paraphrasing): Yeah, I was looking at those sites you sent me. And then I thought, why I am wasting an hour of my time trying to figure out which book site has the best data portability policy?

But you're probably going to spend a lot more time contributing your content to the site. Wouldn't you like to know that all that time and effort wasn't going to be wasted?

I think it's that only YC/Slashdot readers call it that.

How many Facebook users have you encountered who would leave if there were an alternative? The lack of portable data inhibits the adoption of alternatives by raising the cost of leaving. I've heard "I'd leave, but I've got everything on FB" (referring to photos, usually) which they can't get off FB.

Really?

I've never heard "I'd leave, but all my photos are on Facebook". Instead what I hear a lot of is "I'd leave, but all my friends are on Facebook".

Data portability solves an easy problem that relatively few people are bothered by; at the end of the day the big problem is that you can take your social graph with you. You can't make your friends all jump to service Y with you.

I hear the friends side (much) more, certainly, but I know quite a few people who upload their photos to Facebook and then delete them locally. Which is pretty idiotic, but about par for the course with most people and computers. I'd guesstimate I've encountered almost a dozen people doing that, which implies a pretty large amount when multiplied.

Interesting. Certainly not a behavior I'd have expected, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

I'm curious... is there any difference between a social contract and a social compact? If not, "compact" just seems like either an antiquated form or an attempt at obfuscation / smarter-than-thou with language (though those aren't really dissimilar).