A knowledge management community of practice that got punted by its online landlord, Yahoo Groups, successfully lobbied to get the information sharing group reinstated on Yahoo’s servers.
The fact the group has been active since 1999 and has
1,569 members didn’t slow Yahoo down when it got wind of possible
trademark infringements.
Moral of the story: When you build an online community using someone else’s servers and usage agreements, you run the risk that your group’s use of the online space can be cut off or prescribed by the company that is hosting you. The thousands of hours spent posting content is also in danger, unless you have back-ups of everything.
I’ve heard similar tales of woe from people who cancelled their Flickr account, with thousands of photos in it, then found they couldn’t reinstate the account. "Account deleted" meant exactly that.
Fortunately for the KM group, Yahoo still had everything stored on its servers.
Link courtesy Nancy White.
Tags: knowledgemanagement km yahoo termsofuse
2 responses so far ↓
1 Lion Kimbro // Feb 21, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Too few groups (in both companies and civil society) recognize the importance of owning their mechanical infrastructure, or at least understanding deeply where the organization is coming from that provides it.
I like to tell the story this way: Suppose it was 2030, and you bought yourself a cyborg arm. Would you be secure in knowing that you weren’t allowed to reprogram it? That some company reserved the right to shut it down, whenever they liked? That you aren’t allowed to know how it works?
2 Eric Eggertson // Feb 21, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Good analogy, Lion. I think it’s okay to have some dependencies, but it’s important to know where your weaknesses are, and what your fallback plan is if the service provider you depend on either goes out of business, changes their terms of service, or just fails to provide a stable service.
This goes for free services just as much as it goes for paid services.