I considered titling this, the 'Time Value of Content', but decided against it as I thought it might be good if someone actually read it :)

Over the holidays, I reflected on the true potential of personal clouds. Often, when you work with something every day, you take it for granted and get too close so that you stop viewing things as most people would. When this happens, it is often good to take a step back for a fresh look.

In this case, I stepped back from the daily focus on personal clouds so I could use them as most people would i.e. occasionally, such as when people take photos on their phone, or they want to remotely access or play something, e.g. from someone else's PC or tablet.

This made me think about the unique role that personal clouds can play. Without getting too philosophic or long-winded, it basically boils down to the following. It is not about accessing a file remotely or on some other device, as there are now plenty of ways to do this. This capability has surpassed commodity status as it is pretty much built into every internet-related thing in the world :)

Nor is it about backup, as although it is critically important, backup falls into that category of things that people know they should do but most don't, you can supply your own examples.

Instead, the real problem that personal clouds can address is the 'splinternet'. The splinternet simply means that people's data and content are increasingly spread out in many places and it becomes increasingly difficult to access, manage and control what you want, when you want. Think about all of the places where your info resides. You may have important stuff in Gmail, Outlook or another email account, Facebook, iTunes, iCloud, Dropbox, a photo sharing site, Youtube, your computer, phone or tablet. It includes physical content in manila files, shoeboxes and photo albums, DVD and music collections, etc. As time marches on, people's personal splinternets are getting much more fragmented, not less.

Is the splinternet really a major problem for most people? It depends on whom you ask. A family head might think of their children's photos and videos as invaluable. A businessperson with a big rolodex might think of their contacts or calendar data as irreplaceable. A teenager or audiophile might value their music collection above all.

To me, the real value of a personal cloud is providing a truly simple and reliable way for people to get whatever they consider to be their most important stuff, in an easy way. Like a personal google for all of your private data and content such as your photos, videos, music, files and more.

The reason I considered calling this 'the time value of content' is that not all content is created equal. In many cases, people's most recent content is their most relevant i.e. their latest photos, music and files. Again, there are any number of different ways to access these things. The problem that is much harder, and that nobody has cracked yet, is making it truly easy to access whatever you want, when you want, without performing unnatural acts, like being super disciplined to make sure you organize all of your stuff (which is not going to happen for the vast majority of people on earth).

For example, at a New Year's Eve party, I was talking to someone about a cycling trip from a few years ago. I pulled out my phone and showed pictures that were in a few places, such as on my PC hundreds of miles away, others by members of the trip on Facebook and some from a website by the company organizing the trip.

To me, this is the true potential or killer app of personal clouds, i.e. the ability to tame the splinternet into your own personal google. As noted, there's nothing really like this yet today that cuts across all of the multiple device and content cloud silos and your computers and devices, but I know at least one company working on it :)