Over at Hockey Pundits, Jordon is linking to this excellent post by Dave Winer. Dave is calling for a compatible blogging data format
This time, after the outage is cleared, we should begin a discussion, in earnest, about getting user’s data in a format that makes it easy to move between blogging software, and storing that data somewhere that’s not likely to go offline when there’s an outage. I think this will do a lot to help users feel empowered, which is the hardest part about not being able to access your blog, the feeling that there’s nothing you can do to help yourself. (David Berlind writes passionately about this.)Of course there will be debate about what the format should be, it wouldn’t be the software industry without such a debate, but this time we should reach closure and interop. But let’s hold off that discussion until the outage is over and the users are back up.
I am not an engineer but anyone who has ever had Blogger or Typepad fail on them (and as a WordPress.com user, I know that it is only a matter of time as well) can see the wisdom in this.
Technorati Tags : Blogger, Typepad, Dave+Winer
Honest question — what are the export options on your current blog? I work with the TypePad (and Movable Type) teams, and while we’ve had export from day one, I’m curious what other users’ expectations are.
My current blog has none and of course the question is larger than MT or Typepad which have it. Blogspot is frustrating in that it doesn’t allow import and makes export a pain. If I ever wanted to leave WordPress.com, this would be a difficult proposition as well.