The Cost Of Twitter and Facebook
Pat Phelan over at Cubic Telecom wrote a post about how much Twitter is costing businesses. As someone rightly pointed out in the comments, what’s the cost of any given thing to business anyway?
I think the bigger, more important question is why are we wasting our time–whatever it costs–using a service that clearly doesn’t have a viable business model? The same thing could be said for Facebook–especially Facebook–and any number of other services. All that time, all that energy, all that “communication” could be gone in an instant, either because the company joins the deadpool or because someone thinks you violated the rules and deletes you.
While I’m not advocating getting rid of Twitter and Facebook, I think we all need to re-examine why we are using these services and what are plan B and C is when these services go under or become subject to additional corporate stupidity.
I guess there’s something to be said for having multiple ways of communicating with people. You never know when that “free” service suddenly goes away or turns pay-to-play. The best idea is to store it on your own server and push it out to those whom want to connect. Seems like the best idea to me, what say you?
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Tags: facebook, social networking, twitter Fnord
Comment by PhoneBoy
Speaking of social networking, some comments from the peanut gallery on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=16780105503
Comment by Irfon-Kim Ahmad
I’m failing to see what the problem is. If Facebook spontaneously goes out of business or decides to charge more than I’m willing to pay (which wouldn’t be much) or makes some move that I flat-out balk at, I’ll stop using Facebook. I mean, this sounds to me a lot like someone coming up to a bunch of kids playing with Star Wars action figures and saying, “Do you have any idea how cheaply those are made?! Why do you play with those things? You need a plan B or C for when those things break!” I mean, when they break, they just don’t play with them anymore. If they have another toy handy they play with that instead. What’s the problem? Why stop using it just because it might not be there forever if it’s fun today?
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Comment by spg
it is a bit fascinating to me how everything tech related quickly becomes a conversation about business model. when was the last time you enjoyed yourself at a cafe or pub and had a conversation about the profitability of the establishment. this shows just how fragile the information economy is; and i presume likely to be hit very very hard in the event of a recession.
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