The Death of a Web Service

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The Death of a Web Service

I have talked endlessly on this blog about the emerging world of web services where you can easily build really useful applications by patching together a bunch of open web services.

In fact this blog is a perfect example of that world. I started with Typepad, then got Feedburner, Adsense, Bloglet, del.icio.us, Flickr, Amazon, Indeed, Bitty Browser, LibSyn, and probably a few more web services. Together, they provide to me, and hopefully you, a really useful application.

But what happens when one of these web services dies?

I’ve been thinking a bit about that this weekend as Bloglet has been acting really flaky.

Bloglet is the “subscribe by email” service that I offer on the upper left hand column of this blog.

As of this morning, I have 996 email subscribers to this blog.

Over the past couple years, Bloglet has been flaky from time to time, but it always comes back. I hope that happens again, but what if it doesn’t?

I can’t strand 1000 email subscribers, many of whom think of this blog as a daily email newsletter because that is how they get it.

In fact a friend of ours sent me an email today asking "where are the blogs?" That might seem funny to you, but it wasn't to me and it wasn't to her.

The RSS advocates will say, “let them learn RSS”. But I don’t think that’s the right answer.

The right answer is to find a new email subscription web service and that’s what I will do if Bloglet in fact is dead.

But how do I get my 996 email addresses out of Bloglet?

I guess I could page through all 50 pages of my subscription lists in Bloglet and cut and paste them into Excel and then I’ve got an email file that I can deliver to some other service.

But I’ve got this nagging concern that I am going to hard code 996 email addresses into some new web service.

And that is not a happy thought.

So, here is my short list of Web Services Rules To Live and Die By

Allow the users to easily get all of their data out of a web service anytime they want.
Don't hold users captive and let them remove themselves from the service.
Always shut down a service that users rely on in an orderly and professional fashion.

Of course these rules have another benefit which is they allow users to leave if they are unhappy as well. It's harder to get users to join if they get the sense that leaving is going to be hard. So this policy is the best for everyone involved.

If you have any other suggestions for the Web Services Rules to Live and Die By, please send them my way or leave them in the comments.

Comments (18) | | TrackBack (11)

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Posted August 15, 2005 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

Try R|mail.

Posted by: Randy Charles Morin | Aug 15, 2005 11:52:07 PM

If Bloglet is going to die, our WebWorks department is more than happy to take it over. For that matter, if any Web 2.0 free services are looking for a new home we are happy to help take them over. Just have them give us a call at 214.550.2003 and ask for Alex.

http://www.weblogswork.com/?page_id=164

Posted by: Alexander Muse | Aug 16, 2005 12:22:36 AM

Web 2.0 needs service level agreements (SLAs) like we have in the real world. Data should never be stored in a proprietary format, used for malicious or 3rd party profit purposes, and stored in a secure, indelible location.

Posted by: Raj Bala | Aug 16, 2005 1:02:36 AM

"Allow the users to easily get all of their data out of a web service anytime they want."

aka Export.

To facilitate adoption of your service, allow users to easily Import data in various formats.

This is also a case of: Be tolerant in what you receive, be conservative in what you send.

There's also a question of incentive: Why would you want to ease migration from your service to a competitor? I think that challenging services in competetive markets will have to provide full migration service themselves: Fill in you username and password of the service you want to migrate from, click "Import", and you're done.

Just like firefox can take over all IE settings. That's user friendly. Ofcourse microsoft is not going to ease migration from IE...

Posted by: Meryn | Aug 16, 2005 7:18:47 AM

I think you're raising the white flag too early by giving up on RSS (really the proper way to track your site).

I completely see what you're saying about how many users don't get RSS and how 99% simply "get" email.

The challenge, then, is to somehow create as seamless and frictionless an experience as possible for using RSS. I'm an interaction designer who is very interested in helping RSS get to the masses (a challenge no doubt). In my opinion, the final hurdle for RSS is not technology. As an "application", RSS is an awful, disjointed experience. If we fix that, you won't need to worry about a list of subscribers.

Posted by: Richard Ziade | Aug 16, 2005 8:14:15 AM

"You get what you pay for" comes to mind. Or more like you get what you don't pay for. Since any pre-teen coder can slap together a web service these days, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the level of professionalism is going to take a hit. Not knowing anything about Bloglet I checked the site. It appears to be a free service. The last "news" update is from March '05. Seems like this is a hobby.

Maybe Alexander has the right idea. Roll up "hobby level" web services for next to nothing, offer them with a service level agreement, run them professionally and charge accordingly. After enough people get screwed using the "cheapest" tool they'll gladly pay for "value."

Posted by: Andy Nardone | Aug 16, 2005 8:57:21 AM

Providing users the ability to seamlessly transfer their information from one service to another has been a challenge across multiple industries, and the suggestion to open this up is a great one. The banking industry is a great example; where until recently, the ability to transfer funds from one financial institution to another was extremely complicated or even impossible. INGDirect introduced this ability and saw their business grow, pretty quickly, and customers were happy. The concern of losing customers because it was easy to leave was challenged big time, and actually drew more customers than lost, and also challenged the traditional thinking.

A more relevant example exists online today with ‘sticky apps’ such as email services, web hosting, bill payment, contact management, and many other applications on the web today. . How much of the AOL customer base in still around because transitioning from AOL email, with all their contacts, storage, email and spam rules, and obviously inbound email, is much too complicated and painful? The banks know that a customer that sets up the bill pay relationship and pay bills are locked in (they are 2x less likely to leave the bank). Even the less satisfied groups are almost 3x less likely to leave the bank. If you want to move your account, use the information for other applications, or even download the details into another supporting tool, is near to impossible.

Why not focus on offering tools that integrate well? Why not offer an open environment and focus on offering the best service possible? The better approach is to offer the best service and products and not try to lock the customer into a situation that causes them any pain in using the data?

The golden rule should be, given the relationship and trust, to provide the user the ability to access their information and export it at any time.

Posted by: Jim Larrison | Aug 16, 2005 10:45:23 AM

Post RSS to email listserv. Simple bridge to make it easier for the publisher and shield everyone else from having to download and learn yet another piece of tech. A lot of people aren't going to buy into "RSS"; it's too technical and causes eye-glaze. It has to be explained. So take it up a level--Publish your thoughts, subscribe to these articles, whatever--and reach the market through semantics they get.

BTW--Giftworks has both easy import and easy export. We'll keep our customers through better software, not through brute force. We have one customer coming to us from Raiser's Edge; Blackbaud wanted to charge them $5,000 to get their data out, giving the customer one last bad taste in their mouth and us a great PR opportunity.

Posted by: charlie crystle | Aug 16, 2005 10:57:37 AM

"Since any pre-teen coder can slap together a web service these days..."

Everything is getting easier, isn't it? The cliche used to be about pre-teens slapping together web pages. Before that, any pre-teen could mow a lawn.

What will be the next innovation for pre-teens?

Posted by: Adam DuVander | Aug 16, 2005 2:13:52 PM

We've been running a similar service for 3 years called Blogarithm.com. We're in the process of building a major expansion that we believe will go a long way towards addressing the hassle of RSS, as well as providing blog updates via email.

Couldn't agree more re: your service rules. One issue we face, though, when it comes to email updates for blog readers, is who is the customer? We're all for the blogger who wants to make sure those readers who want them get updates via email. However, since, for example, we allow people to sign up for updates even if the blogger doesn't participate, it makes sense to us to let the readers export their blog lists, but not to let the blogger have access to email addresses that they may not have collected. Any thoughts?

Posted by: Max Minkoff | Aug 16, 2005 4:55:32 PM

This is really interesting... Mena had written a (kinda rambly) post a while back about the "philosophy of yes":

From day one of Movable Type to day one of TypePad, we have provided not just an import mechanism but also an export mechanism. We never wanted to hold content hostage in order to guarantee tool lock-in.

The "export" button in Six Apart's products keeps us on our toes. Knowing that you can leave at any time is our motivator to keep on developing stable, intuitive and flexible applications. We want you to stay because you like the product, not because you can't get out.

I haven't seen a similar commitment from a lot of other vendors, even in the social software space.

Posted by: Anil Dash | Aug 17, 2005 2:17:15 PM

I agree with the need to provide users with a way to change services. That is why I had Bookmark Export function in Simpy from day 1.
Yes, I could lock in Simpy users, but I hate being locked in myself, so why be a hypocrite and do that to others? People use Simpy because it helps them with bookmarks, notes, searching, tagging, etc., and not because they have no way out. I know we'll never be able to get everyone to susbscribe to this way of thinking and doing business, but I want to do the right thing with Simpy.

Posted by: Otis Gospodnetic | Aug 17, 2005 3:19:42 PM

Try FeedBlitz - it has the capabilities of Bloglet (subscriber management etc) and, critically, allows you to migrate your feeds and readers from Bloglet in a simple operation. It also reports subscriber conts properly to FeedBurner.

I run it, full disclosure, but it's up and running now (not someday soon) and is servicing nearly 1,000 readers in its first 15 days of operation. You're not locked in, and there is someone at the helm. The audience is clear for FeedBlitz: publishers. Yes, anyone can subscribe to any feed, just like Bloglet, but publishers need the control and the capabilities - the kinds of things that I suspect drew us all to Bloglet in the first place.

FWIW

http://www.feedblitz.com

Why not?

Posted by: Phil Hollows | Aug 18, 2005 4:57:53 PM

I have been using FeedBlitz for my blog for a week now and it looks good.

Posted by: Ashish Hanwadikar | Aug 18, 2005 5:37:48 PM

I used to look forward to the regular "A VC" email. I wonder how many "RSS in email" products are out there (BizConnector is one of them) that could perhaps be seen as a "bridge between different worlds".

BTW, BizConnector has an Export function.

Posted by: Colin Goldberg | Aug 19, 2005 3:34:25 PM

FeedBlitz has a similar service, and a tool to extract your addresses from Bloglet. I've discussed this topic further here.

Posted by: Rob Walling | Aug 31, 2005 2:34:13 PM

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