Silo issues – lack of seamless interoperability between computer platforms/devices/services – will undoubtedly remain in the near- (possibly medium-) future, but that’s not a good thing.

In a 2011 post, I basically broke down the issue at that time into two buckets:

• Devices: One eReader can’t support the other’s format; and why do I have to buy a game twice for my two devices – an iPhone and Android tablet? (Just an example)
• Data: Why so hard to move MY data around? Export from one service to another is painful to impossible?

The wildcard – The Cloud

Both these problems still exist, and I’d argue that Point 2 (data portability) is getting worse, simply because more and more people are putting everything into The Cloud: “Blog posts” and pictures at Facebook or Tumblr; pictures at Instagram or Flickr.

Remember, Google just shuttered a social network – Orkut. Who’s to say another (former) heavyweight won’t be around forever? (Orkut was huge in South America, particularly Brazil, before succumbing to Facebook.)

We first put words (blogs, emails, forums, social networks) into the cloud that we expected to always be there.

Now we’re putting pictures and videos in the cloud, and we’re getting closer to putting a lot of date- and location-based info in the cloud: Think of doing an entire wedding on the web/via an app. Invites, RSVP list, registries etc all through one site. It probably exists; if not, it will.

But what happens when that wedding site/app shuts down a few months before your wedding? Is there a standard “eEvent” export “eEvent -wedding” that you can use to move your guest/church/restaurant/band/registries from the shuttered site to a new one?

Nah.

And let’s say there was some sorta such export.

But – for directions to, say church and reception, the shuttered app only supported Google Maps. But the import tool only supports Bing or Yahoo! maps (and so on…..).

Lot of chaos going on re: silos right now.

Not getting a lot of attention, for two reasons:

• There are – everyday – new ways to push/create new/existing data into the cloud via desktop or mobile apps. Remarkable. Let’s see even more!
• Exporting data out of the cloud and/or re-importing it somewhere…not so sexy. (So few efforts [relatively], and little press).

This is a problem that’s going to get bigger still before it gets smaller, in my opinion.