Removing lapsed customers the web 2.0 way

I received a helpful reminder last night from Facebook that they’re about to make some major breaking (but, it should be noted, well-publicized) changes to their app requirements.  Specifically, some authentication code that used to work won’t anymore, and all apps will have to be hosted on servers with SSL certificates.

This is going to be interesting, since up until now, if you had web hosting somewhere, you had everything you needed to have, say, a custom Facebook tab on your company page.  Now you’ll need to pay for a cert, which might not even be available if you’re on a really cheap shared server plan.

I imagine that there will be a few phones ringing on the 1st.  But maybe not October 1st.  The fact is, after a platform’s been around for a while, a lot of “experiments” get left by the wayside, basically abandoned, so for many they might not realize there’s a problem for some time.  For others, this will provide a welcome relief in the form of an excuse to kill off an ill-conceived initiative.

For others, though, there may be trouble if they’ve outsourced the work long ago and need some changes made in a hurry.

Apple has a similar system in place for their app store.  If you don’t pay the annual fee, your apps no longer appear in the store, a fact that I know has surprised a number of independent developers who had free apps in place but didn’t feel like they had to remain responsible for them.

And just like with Facebook, I’m sure at this point every single day a company loses their app (but doesn’t necessarily know it) because it was released into the wild by a well meaning contractor who didn’t see fit to renew.

Two takeaways here: first, are your products and services available “forever,” without the need for users to take some form of action, financial or otherwise, to stay on the books? Forever’s a long time.  And on the other side of the fence, are you in control of your technical deployments?  Disaster recovery planning focuses on large scale events, but “I lost that guy’s phone number” is something that should (yet really, really shouldn’t) be on a lot more organizations’ scenario lists.