This Cloud (Computing) Has No Silver Lining

When Content Is Held Hostage by Storage-Policy Changes

Posted by Matthew Knell on 06.15.09 @ 05:21 PM

Matthew Knell

Thanks to the continued growth of inexpensive hardware that makes it cheap and easy for people to create content, the average consumer is drowning in thousands of minutes of user-generated video, a few thousand photos and likely a few days worth of audio content. We want our content on demand, wherever we are, on whatever platform we want, right now and however we choose to use it. It's "our" content, right? So what if it's not physically on our computers?

"Cloud computing" provides us the ability to do that. One click on the right device with an internet connection is all it takes to download a song or app from iTunes or a book or a magazine on a Kindle; to view, sort and edit our expansive Flickr libraries; to collaborate on a presentation in Google Docs; to back up our desktop files using Dropbox or Box.net; to catch up with e-mail on Gmail (and have it sync in real time to an iPhone, BlackBerry, web browser and desktop mail program); to store biographical, connection and friend data on Facebook or running data with Nike Plus. You get the idea. The ubiquitous broadband connection and high-speed wireless networks available in the majority of America's homes and businesses have made access to the cloud just about instantaneous.

Of course, the best part about all of this is that it costs nothing. It's easy to use, free and completely extensible. The hope, of course, is that many of these free customers will at some point opt in to premium services, which will offset the cost of all of the free users. It's called the "freemium" model, and its success has depended largely on the actions of the brands who attempt to execute it.

You don't worry much about your content in the cloud, until the company with access to "your" content decides the access and storage conflicts with its desired business model.

This is what happened with Kodak Gallery last week.

Long story short, Kodak Gallery decided it was going to require users to make minimum purchases in order to subsidize the use of its websites and kill its freemium model. The new plans range from $4.99 to $19.99 per month. And if you don't pay the fee or provide a minimum purchase by a given date? Your photos will be deleted.

"Wait," I thought. "These are my pictures that I've uploaded over the course of nearly five years. There are 3,000 of them!"

Obviously frustrated by the thought of losing my photos, many of which were gone from local storage due to hard-drive failures, I had to figure out my options. Now you may say, stop right there: Why weren't you backing up your photos? The answer is that I thought I was. I had started to use my Kodak Gallery as a repository for photos in case of the inevitable hard-drive failure. Why Kodak Gallery? Physical storage wasn't as cheap then, Kodak offered a free solution to my problem and Flickr hadn't yet become as mature as it is today. Stupid to put my photos exclusively in the hands of a brand I trusted? Perhaps. But I believed the hype and trusted Kodak to do the right thing with my content -- forever. These were my photos, my data, and I had confidence that they would do the right thing. These were my Kodak memories. I had five years of trusted transactions with this company.

So I reached out to Kodak using the new customer-service model: I messaged it on Twitter. After spirited conversation, two blog posts, a video, sharing the accounts of other people affected by the change and explaining my cause, it became obvious that "cloud computing" was a digital Bates Motel: Your content checks in, but it's much harder (or impossible) to check it out. The only ways to get all of "my" photos back: pay the storage fee, order a $70 archive CD, or download 3,000 photos, one at a time. Hard lesson learned.

It's now no longer about picking the brand that will do the right thing; it's a matter of how long until it, too, considers this sort of policy shift. How long until you're put in this sort of position and content that was once so close becomes very far away indeed? What happens if Yahoo is sold and Flickr changes its rules? Kodak may be the first, but it surely will not be the last company that changes a policy.

The post mortem on this campaign will become the stalwart of a risk analysis for someone else looking to do this in the future, and if the results of the blowback become perceived as "not much," it becomes an acceptable risk for the next guy.

As for my photos? They're still deleted. A Kodak PR representative finally reached out to have a dialogue about my concerns. Am I blameless here? Probably not. But I'm a consumer who trusted a brand that I was loyal to. Is Kodak free to change its business model? Of course. But has it changed my mind about the brand? Absolutely.

~ ~ ~
Matthew Knell is a co-founder of Social Media for Social Change (SM4sSC), teaches social media and information architecture at New York University, and blogs about life and the internet at tagsmith.org.

10 Comments

By rsaling | Surprise, AZ June 16, 2009 03:07:50 am:

While Kodak has the right to change the model and I am sure that as the program grew, they needed to start charging, I wonder how it affected others' perceptions of the brand. I think of this with NetZero. They used to be a free internet provider and swore they would never charge. They changed. WAMU used to offer school savings programs for elementary kids to start savings accounts. Now that Chase bought out WAMU, that program has stopped. Reasonable people understand that things change, but it may take some time for the brand to recover. I doubt Kodak will be hurt for long.

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By nickkinports | Chicago, IL June 16, 2009 10:32:31 am:

The biggest hitch in cloud computing is how your data lives and who ultimately controls it. Bandwidth, storage space, and electricity are still too expensive to believe your content will live forever and be free.

Google has so much money today that it literally doesn't have to worry about all its free cloud based services (mail, docs, apps, etc...). Will that always be the case? Probably not.

More pressing examples can be found in social networks, who struggle to make enough money to stay in business. How long will Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter remain free? When the changeover happens, how will you retrieve five years of conversations, pictures, shared memories, etc...

Something to consider...

Nicholas E. Kinports
Digital Integration Manager
Blog: http://admaven.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/admaven

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By mhugos | Chicago, IL June 16, 2009 12:01:00 pm:

I hear you Matthew and at the same time we all know that "free" is not a sustainable business model. So what do we think will happen when we place all our trust in free services? This model is going the way of communism/socialism/utopianism and other failed social systems (because money talks and BS walks).

Also it seems to me that 5 years of memories and 3,000 photographs ought to be worth $70 for an archive CD. And if all that stuff isn't worth $70 then is it worth anything at all - really?

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By tbugir | Golden, CO June 16, 2009 12:21:14 pm:

Edison wanted everyone to buy a generator, bulbs, wiring etc. from his company. Then came along the utilities. Do you trust your power company more than you trust yourself? Can you do it cheaper yourself? It will take time for this change to be accepted - just another opportunity for media to help navigate change in our lives. Take your pick - it still costs.

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By Addendumb | Madison, WI June 16, 2009 07:25:45 pm:

It's insane you posted this on the same day that Opera released Opera Unite, a service that eliminates the need for the Kodaks and Flickrs of the internet. They claim it's going to "reinvent the web." I am not completely overwhelmed by it, but of course my photos aren't all stuck on Kodak's server.

And they won't be, because now, WE control our content.

http://www.opera.com/freedom/
http://addendumb.blogspot.com/2009/06/opera-unite-preemptive-answer-to-adages.html

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By craigcooper | craigcooper.com, NY June 17, 2009 01:39:47 am:

Here's the other reason why the much bally-hooed cloud computing sucks:

Because Time-Warner and other ISPs are wholly unreliable.

Nothing like having your Internet connection go down with a deadline looming.

I'll keep my progs and files on my local machines and disks, thank you very much.

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By dbowers3 | Burlington, VT June 17, 2009 09:37:43 am:

Its never free, but a question of who pays. Advertisers pay for broadcast TV and radio. Google advertisers pay for Google services. When users ignore the advertising and the return diminishes, other finance models are implemented. Clearly, it did not become cost effective for Kodak to spend that much money advertising through a free service.

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By hardlynoticable | Galiano Island, BC June 17, 2009 12:38:13 pm:

The real story here is what we might charitably describe as a lack of sophistication, but might uncharitably describe as mercenary tactics on behalf of Kodak.

For instance, creating a facility so that people could select and download albums of photos is not exactly rocket science any more. Even if it's something they have some legitimate reason to discourage normally, and allowing users a grace period to download a large number of photos from their albums would have kept their brand intact with little extra expense.

And for that matter, if all they did was stop allowing users to create NEW albums unless they abide by the new terms, they would eventually get to the same place through attrition if they delete only inactive accounts.

My point is I think Mathew has a legitimate line of complaint; but I think this story is more about a company "making hard choices" where creative choices are what they really needed.

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By awrb84 | Gainesville, FL June 18, 2009 04:39:59 pm:

I must admit, I don't know why you would really be upset for paying Kodak to store your photos. I understand that it was free before, but you were storing 3,000 photos. I don't know the terms of the packages but even the $19.99 to store all of your photos online is worth it until you can back them up on some sort of hard drive. I don't know, for some reason people have decided that digital media should be free, but they have no problem paying for hardware. I suppose this is because hardware is obviously tangible, but did you forget your intangible digital media is stored somewhere on a very tangible piece of hardware that was not free?

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By allenfalcon | Westborough, MA June 19, 2009 01:39:16 pm:

Stop whining and grow up!

Kodak was not marketing or offering a photo storage system, they offered a service for you to upload photos in order to buy prints, albums, mugs, calendars, etc. It was never intended to be a free storage service or a backup service. Those using the service as such were abusing its intent and violating the terms and conditions of their free accounts (did you read the terms when you first signed up?).

All Kodak did was align their pricing to match how users are telling Kodak they use the site.

If you use the service as a conduit to getting prints or other physical things, you pay nothing to store your photos.

If you are using it only for remote disk space, you now need to pay for a service with value.

It's NOT the "freemium" model. It is simply charging customers for the value they receive from services delivered.

I agree with MHUGOS, if your pictures weren't worth spending $20 on a mug or prints, or $70 for a CD ($0.0233 per pic), then why do you care if they were deleted?

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