Another Discontinued Product, Another Case for Web5

I received an email informing me that Google Podcasts is being discontinued next year.

You may be thinking, "Big deal. There are tons of other podcast apps out there," and yes that's true. However, all of my activity is locked into this app. I'm subscribed to dozens of podcasts, have listened to hundreds of podcast episodes (some I've started and not yet finished, but plan to), and have many episodes queued up. If I want to go to another podcast service, none of this comes with me 😭.

This is one of the benefits that Web5 provides. It decouples our data from the apps that we use. Instead of having my subscriptions, history, ratings, and interests locked in a single app, these very personal things would be stored with me in my very own personal data store, which I then can access with any app I choose to.

What is this sorcery I speak of? It's the implementation of Decentralized Web Nodes(DWN), an open web standard which serves as a core pillar of Web5 to enable personal data stores. In the case of a decentralized podcast app, it would write my data to my DWN enabling me to hop between different podcast apps with all of my data in tow!

Now you may wonder, why would any app willingly give away this control? Let's just consider the "cold start" issue that services like Spotify will have to face when trying to win over Google Podcast users. Wouldn't it benefit them to be able to seamlessly onboard these new users without making them start from scratch? An app offering such freedom would easily win my business, even if they aren't one of the big players.

The issue of discontinuing services is not unique to Google. Companies across the tech landscape frequently sunset products for a variety of reasons. The focus here is on the systemic issue that affects us, the end-users, when this happens.

For example, not long ago, Revue discontinued their newsletter service, and poof - I lost all of my old newsletters and thousands of subscribers.

As online apps continue to become such an integral part of our daily lives, I'm looking forward to an era of ones that prioritize both innovative user experiences and data portability.