Hello
Let say that one has to convince a company to adopt solid for its new app, given that this company only cares about its own interest rather than the “greater good”.
What would be the arguments to convince it to adopt solid?
Whether or not Solid is beneficial for the company depends on the goal and the product they want to build. Some advantages Solid could have depending on context:
- No need to build cross-cutting concerns like log-in, user management & authorization themselves
- less need or no need at all for a backend
- No need for additional registration → App can start with all the Solid user as a user base
- Can use common existing data like profile information, contacts, address, interests for own use cases (users do not have to enter them over and over again)
- gain more users due to trust (“the company honors my digital souvereignty”)
- Can store sensitive data on users behalf, no need to store it on own systems and be responsible for security and leaks
- Profit from data user generated with other apps
- … and more (I hope this is enough for now to get the idea)
4 Likes
Thanks @aveltens for this great answer, I’ll also add the following point:
- it helps companies to be GDPR compliant with less struggle, as you mentioned here
I’m not sure I understand, could you elaborate on this point?
Yes that’s plenty! but feel free to add to the list, the more the better 
2 Likes
for me, it gets confusing to hear people answer from silos because what you really need to be asking is what are the arguments in favor of solid, that are unique to solid?
most of the things listed by @aveltens are not unique to solid.
this is similar to SOLID ppl arguing for “Web 3.0” instead of “web3” and bashing the usefulness of blockchain, when the same arguments apply when relational database ppl bash graphs and semantic web and such …
the list that @aveltens shared is moreso a list of benefits that could be achieved by many things.
when asking about solid specifically, the answers need to be much more mundane, and about affordances … the same goes for any technology (tool, etc …) …
don’t confuse tools for uses … etc .
It’s true that the individual things listed are not unique by themselves, but the combination is quite unique and revolutionary. Understanding the power of Solid goes beyond a list of features and I recommend reading Ruben’s articles to get a deeper understanding, especially
and
1 Like
One of the core concerns of Solid is data interoperability. With consent of the user, data created by one app can be used by other apps. An example: Let’s say I am using an app of my car repair shop, to manage my car and its maintainance. The app stores all data on my Pod. Now I am using another Solid app, that allows me to find a new car insurance. I can give it access to my car base data and some personal information so it can find an insurance for me. Currently such insurance comparison services have to ask the users for any detailed information in a quite long process, and not all potential users are willing to go through it.
3 Likes