The following posting from Good Morning Silicon Valley surfaces a critical issue in social computing and in fact information technology - who owns your data. There is a social network called "43 things" that has attracted interest from people wanting to share their dreams and aspirations. The problem is that Amazon.com invested in 43 Things, so who owns whose dreams and aspirations? Read about this issue and the history of 43 things here, and decide for youself. REALNEO does not want to own your dreams but to make your aspirations more useful for you - read on about what Amazon has in mind for you...

Would you like to add "lose weight" and "finish screenplay" to your Amazon
shopping cart? If you're considering posting your desires and grand designs
to 43
Things, a social networking site designed to help people find others who
share their aspirations, you should probably know that you'll
be sharing your hopes and dreams with Amazon as well. Salon reports that 43
Things, which tries very hard to look like a grassroots Web site, is actually an
Amazon-funded start-up masquerading as one. What are Amazon's plans for the
venture? The company's not telling. But I, for one, am hoping for insolvency,
because leading folks to believe they're sharing their souls with kindred
spirits, when in fact they are entering their innermost thoughts into the
database of the Web's biggest retailer (which undoubtedly has some
goal-fulfilling products to sell them), is one of the lowest things I've run
across in a looong time.