I’m 28. So, in some ways I feel torn between the 30 somethings who make up most of my attention quota on blogs, RSS, Twitter streams and even Facebook feeds and the early 20 something’s of whom I still have many close friends and contacts. One of the biggest gaps that exists between these two groups is how data is treated. I’m not a kid anymore, but I don’t feel a part of the “Data Generation” that is so keen on hording info in an offline magnetic tape Gollum like fashion.

I love web applications and use them for just about everything I do. All of my email (GMail), feeds (Google Reader), documents (Google Docs and Spreadsheets) podcasts (Netvibes just recently), IM (Meebo and Skype), calendaring (30Boxes), organization and notes (BackPack), voicemails (GrandCentral), music (Rhapsody, Pandora and Last.fm) and random notes (Gearpad) are suspended in the cloud. Not to mention that Netvibes functions as my desktop. I’m not tied to any specific box or any specific “offline” programs.

That scares the hell out of many of my 30 somethings friends who view data as their “precious” and work diligently to keep everything centralized and available in case the internets go down. That’s why I have a Blackberry with all the mobile apps listed above in that device’s browser favorites. I wish the iPhone would have worked for me, but the UI just didn’t fit my needs. Sure, I make backups of everything I do as well, they’re just on Amazon’s S3 service (out in the cloud) and not on a permanent magnetic tape hard drive in my office.

There are more and more people like me, especially among the younger 20 somethings. Data is precious, but it is transitory and not locked to one box or one location. I for one welcome our new web app overlords.

That brings up Facebook. One of the many criticisms of Facebook is that it is not an open program and data that is poured into Facebook is non-retrievable on the outside. Fair enough, but that doesn’t really matter to me or most of the younger 20 somethings. Sure, I value the information that I put into Facebook, but there’s nothing mission critical in there that I can’t get access to on other web apps besides wall postings.

Fred Wilson sums it up nicely…

I wish it were so, but most of Facebook’s traditional users (like my two daughters) don’t care that their data is locked up in Facebook. I’ll show them my Facebook running in Netvibes when they wake up this morning and they’ll say “that’s nice dad but why would you want to do that?”.

I don’t see a Facebook rebellion happening anytime soon. The Techcrunch 50,000 might leave when they realize that they can do most, if not everything, that they do in Facebook on the web on a platform they control. But that won’t make a dent in Facebook’s core audience.

Great points, Fred. The transitory nature of web apps isn’t for everyone, and I view Facebook as an extreme example of that sort of platform, especially due to its closed door nature. However, there’s more to be gained than lost there at the moment. Sure, something else might come along to grab our meglo-egos, but for the time being, it’s the best game in town. Play ball.

A VC: The Open Social Network