Fear of 2.0 bust………………..

I was sent an invite to check out a new site (http://www.cloudo.com) that offers a place to back up and store files that are accessible from any computer anywhere in the world (duh..it IS the internet). The site is still in Beta and thus is free.
My initial reaction was one I’ve had for every “2.0” beta site out there….,”Sweet! Free back up!!!” I started to sign up and then thought to myself, “what happens when they burn through all their start up money?” Or, “what happens if they just fail?” Well what will happen is that all the time I spent backing up to their site will have been in vain.
As of this writing I have most of my more important files backed up to no less than 5 “free” storage sites. But to be honest I haven’t checked up on three of them in almost 6 months. The files are mostly family photos of my kids, and my tax returns as well as some other financial info (all of which is secured in a truecrypt file..I’m not stupid). So I have no idea if these companies are online still or not, I suppose after I write this I’ll go check.
I’m writing this because I have this nagging fear that sooner or later (probably sooner thanks to our wonderful economic climate) these companies won’t be bale to sustain their “free” online storage and back up services. How many people will be “screwed” by the collapse of these companies? Not me.
But I suppose that there will be at least three of you out there right?
I DO however PAY to have some data stored via Amazon’s S3. I feel far more secure in this system as it is a pay service, and well, it’s AMAZON!
This subject also leads into more than just sites that allow you to store your spreadsheets and documents. What about sites that allow for storage of photos? This is a biggie for me. I am a member of Flickr and have HUNDREDS of photos stored there. I AM a PAYING member and people like me who pay for the service help to keep it floating I am sure (that and it is owned by Yahoo…not that this makes it invulnerable). But what about the MILLIONS of users who take advantage of the free accounts that Flickr offers? Do these tens of millions of photos put enough drain on resources to potentially kill off Flickr? If so….would I get warning that all my images were about to be gone? There are tons of other sites that people store data on that are “free” to the user but could at some point in time fail. And that has already happened to me once…well…twice.

The first was an online art community named Deskmod (www.deskmod.com...gone now though). I had stored dozens of digital works of art on their site. It was a free site, it was a booming site. It had a very loyal and active community supporting it (although not financially). This site eventually started up a blogging community named Modblog as a kind of spinoff of the art community.
First to go was Deskmod, and with it all of my art. I was devastated because for one thing I had already lost most of my art in an accidental reformatting of a drive (I was young a naïve about backups…what can I say?). So when Deskmod died….so did about 20 of my original works of art. So long…  Then eventually Modblog went down (not too long after Deskmod). And with it went all of my blog posts. I know it sounds ridiculous for someone to be upset about losing blog posts, but these were my thoughts penned to paper (sorta) and they were now gone to the ether.
The owners of Deskmod/Modblog DID attempt to offer a solution to back up your blog posts to a text file (better than nothing) but I never go their application to function properly.

With that being said I now find myself worrying that the current economic status may cause another one of these “collapses” of free services. And with that collapse a LOT of people may find themselves in the same boat I was about 7 years ago.

Let’s hope not.

Remember…back up off site…AND BACK UP LOCALLY!!!

Deskmod:


Modblog: