Re:Data portability, the forgotten right of GDPR
by 0xbadcafebee on Tuesday May 25, 2021 @10:28AM
(#27277205)
It's not your responsibility to help your customers use a competitor's service, so you definitely don't have to care about that. However, you might care if you practice "dogfooding".
The idea of eating one's own dog food is to understand the experience of the customer and improve the product. It demonstrates confidence in your product and helps you empathize with your customers. If you do this & are confident in your product, then a portability feature (to allow your customers to try out your competitors) should not be a threat.
Assuming you can convey to your customers why your product is superior, they won't have need of the porting tool. If one day they think, "Hmm, I wonder if the competitor is better", and try to use the porting tool to use the competitor, and find out it's a huge pain because the competitor's product isn't as good (or doesn't work the way yours does), they may decide they just don't feel like switching. People might also use your product just because they can switch if they ever need to.
Pandora is a great example of a shitty company that does not believe in its own product. If you use the free version, you are constantly bombarded with dark patterns and direct advertisements to get you to upgrade to their paid account. It's annoyware. If you eventually pay for the product, the only value add is fewer ads. There's no improved functionality, there's no easier experience, no better algorithm. Just slightly less pain. It's like upgrading from dogfood that tastes like shit, to dogfood that only smells like shit. If Pandora created a data portability tool, they would be screwing themselves, because they know their product is shit. If they had a great product, portability wouldn't be a threat to their business.
The idea of eating one's own dog food is to understand the experience of the customer and improve the product. It demonstrates confidence in your product and helps you empathize with your customers. If you do this & are confident in your product, then a portability feature (to allow your customers to try out your competitors) should not be a threat.
Assuming you can convey to your customers why your product is superior, they won't have need of the porting tool. If one day they think, "Hmm, I wonder if the competitor is better", and try to use the porting tool to use the competitor, and find out it's a huge pain because the competitor's product isn't as good (or doesn't work the way yours does), they may decide they just don't feel like switching. People might also use your product just because they can switch if they ever need to.
Pandora is a great example of a shitty company that does not believe in its own product. If you use the free version, you are constantly bombarded with dark patterns and direct advertisements to get you to upgrade to their paid account. It's annoyware. If you eventually pay for the product, the only value add is fewer ads. There's no improved functionality, there's no easier experience, no better algorithm. Just slightly less pain. It's like upgrading from dogfood that tastes like shit, to dogfood that only smells like shit. If Pandora created a data portability tool, they would be screwing themselves, because they know their product is shit. If they had a great product, portability wouldn't be a threat to their business.