The value behind the consumption of microchunked user-generated data/content is that it ultimately allows people to use it how they want it, where the want it, and when the want it. Shouldn’t the reverse be the same for how the data/content is produced in the first place? Consumers want to produce content how they want to, where they want to, and when they want to. And it doesn’t seem to be that that’s necessarily on the Edge.

This is a great start for the mixed graph debate.

There are those who feel that all data should be held at the edges -- that memestreams would be better if only these posts were going to my own controlled domain. Maybe this is principly driven by content creator types being the innovators (as discussed in the comments to this blog) -- I blog, my friends blog, so eventually everyone will blog. Or, by analog, I have my own domain for email, you have your own, why would anyone want an @hotmail/@gmail/@yahoo, etc address? For a webpage? Obviously, they do.

They do because they don't like replicating labor, or because they don't have the technical sophistication. I no longer run a local webmail service, because everyone can just use one of the GAMY alternatives. My mom will only have a blog when I set one up for her, and then what she does with it will be dependent on what plugins I show her. If she gets into selling things, it will be on Amazon and eBay, not tags+microformat+EdgeIO (until there are slick plugins and an obvious marketplace).

But why does it have to be one way (walled garden) or the other (edge)? The real opportunity lies in the middle. The next MySpace will be something similar to MySpace, not lots of little blogs and a technorati -- because teens don't care as long as their peers are convenient. Blogging on livejournal, memestreams or blogging on a privately hosted wordpress instance should be equivallent in the eyes of aggregation.