The great space race

Rumours abound in technology circles this month that facebook is Beta trialling an online storage facility. Although there has been talk of this open Beta service being free, the company has declined to comment on an extended official level.

If the rumours prove to be true, given the technology’s early stage of development it is widely recommended that users back up their data on a secondary trusted source.

This whole hullabaloo comes at a time when Microsoft is offering a variety of ‘spaces’ for file sharing, photos and suchlike as part of its Windows LIVE portal. Not to forget Google Documents and Flickr for file sharing of course.

With so much of this virtual storage being free, you have to stand back and ask what the business model must look like for the companies pushing these innovations. Will they be reliant on online advertising or some other revenue stream if the service delivered to the users themselves is provided without cost?

Even if my Safari browser won’t support some of these new offerings, it’s clear that the space race continues to run apace.