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Data portability: Yahoo tool lets 360° users easily transfer their posts to WordPress.com—but nowhere else via the tool
August 25, 2009 | 5:33 am
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By David Rothman
Data portability is a noble fixation for us stalwarts. Why should you write post after post on an interactive site, then see it shut down, with the loss of your work—just because the site wasn’t making enough money for Corporation X? I griped about this in the case of Yahoo 360°.
Now 360° alum Beth Wellington reports that Yahoo finally is providing for automated transfers, but not to the Blogger service, her preferred new home; rather, to WordPress.com. So she’s stuck with having to link from Blogger to archives at WordPress.com. Oh, well, that’s progress of a sort, but still a powerful argument for the existence of DataPortability.org, especially since Yahoo took months to come up with the transfer tool. In fairness to Blogger, as Beth notes, it doesn’t even allow for data import.
The idea of data portability could very much apply to interactive books. Let’s hope that users can pick up the annotations they share.
Of possible interest in Beth’s blog on politics and culture: Obama and those health care emails and a nice sassy post headlined Langston Hughes and the Real Harlem Renaissance (above).
Technorati Tags: Beth Wellington
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Comments:
Thanks, David, for providing your readers w. the update. One clarification: the problem w. portability stemmed from Blogger’s end. They don’t have a utility to import from another blog platform, while wordpress does. I only prefer blogger because I found it first and because I suspect that Google, who runs it, gives me preference in searches.
My hiatus from blogging was not discouragement–I went on for a more than a year. It was because I took a new job with Energy Justice Network , after Newstrust let me go. Not journalism, but I love it.
B.
Congrats on the Energy Justice job, Beth. What a useful group. I did note Blogger’s lack of data imports (though I should have said “In fairness to Yahoo, Blogger does not…”). That said, it still would have been great for the world in general if Yahoo had offered more export choices. The good news, although it won’t help you with Blogger because of the (non)import situation, is that WordPress.com can export. David