There has been much wailing, gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair about Twitter these days because it seems as if the service is down more often than not. And even when it is working again, some features that make it worthwhile (IM, pagination, etc) are unavailable. The poor whale is quite dehydrated now. Twitter is a communication framework that many people now rely on every day. It’s even been touted as an emergency news service and a critical component to some people’s jobs. Hundreds of third parties have written tools to pull, push, slice, dice and trend data from it. And yet it is still a free service. What is Twitter’s obligation to its users? What is any free services’ obligation to its users? And what should the repercussions be for breaking a user’s trust?

Louis Gray has raised some interesting points about Web 2.0 services being crippled by their own success illustrated by the fact that once a service is popular, if it wasn’t built to scale from the start, it will have trouble as it grows. Cyndy Aleo-Carreira has remarked that the entire software development process (or lack thereof) in Web 2.0 is to blame for these problems and argues that the rush to bring something to market without going through the whole old-fashioned software development and release lifecycle (delaying release to the public until a true 1.0 version) is ruining web offerings in general.

My personal take is this: the obligation of a service to provide you with consistent quality, features and uptime is dependent on whether you pay for it. Regardless of monetization, every service that holds on to data it has aggregated or generated for or about you must provide you a way to extract that data from the service. If that one requirement is met, and the service is free, then you don’t have any inherent rights as a user. If you want rights you need to pay for them.

I have a right to complain if I am a paying customer. I expect the service’s obligations to me to be outlined in their Terms of Service. A ToS is a legal contract which should outline the consequences for either party breaking it. If the contract is broken by the service then I expect it to respond in the way that’s defined by the ToS I agreed to when committing financially. If a free service has a ToS, they should live up to it, but I still don’t feel I have a right to complain if they break it because I’m not supporting that service and it’s operations.

I also have a right to complain, if a service holds my data captive and I have no way to extract it and back it up. That’s the only obligation a free service should be required to offer. There are many service out there that don’t offer this, and there are not many practical options for a user to back up their data to. If there’s any real problem with Web 2.0, in my opinion, it’s that one.

We are far too spoiled with all the services we get for free. Companies such as Google have set the bar impossibly high with their offerings. We’ve come to expect not only many new services to appear on the horizon every week but that every one of those services will be feature rich and extremely reliable. We scout and negotiate for invites to beta services to make sure we get in early and don’t miss out on being at the top of the social media pyramid. And we are devoid of gratitude for the time, effort and resources that go into providing those services for us. Our sense of entitlement is misplaced and counter-productive.

That’s not to say, for instance, that I wouldn’t be extremely upset with Google if suddenly they stopped offering Gmail, a free service I use many times a day. My online life revolves around Gmail and the loss of it would impact me greatly. But Gmail offers data export through POP3 and IMAP and a few other options. It’s my responsibility to make sure that data is backed up (whether and how I do is another blog post!). If I am responsible then I won’t have lost my data if the service goes away. I have no real grounds to complain because I have never paid for GMail. And I guarantee that if Gmail started taking the features that make them unique away, I would move to another service. For a free service that’s really the only punishment a user has the right to inflict on it. And it’s an effective one. If enough users leave a service, it dies.

If we start insisting that we have rights on a free service beyond preservation of our data then we are going to completely stifle creativity and innovation on the web by restricting the release of good ideas. Only large organizations that move slowly but have the resources to do a full scale development effort and can afford to handle any lawsuits that happen for infringements of our rights will be able to afford to release anything new. So, users, if you want shiny toys to play with for free, quit insisting on your rights and offer your support by being patient or opening your wallet. Otherwise, quit complaining, leave quietly, and take your rights with you already!

So is the answer for Twitter to start charging customers? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t have the answer there. But I do feel that Twitter, like any other free Web 2.0 service, doesn’t owe any of us anything if we’re not willing to pay.