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If you look me up on Facebook, you won’t find my profile. I did have one until recently, but now it’s gone. Goner than something that’s very gone. Deleted, in fact, not just deactivated.
I really had fun on Facebook for a while, and saw a ton of value in it. It seemed like a very good vehicle for keeping up with what friends are doing, and an even better way to shamelessly promote yourself and what you’ve been up to. Want to show off your latest vacation? No problem, upload some photos. Want to feel incredibly popular? Invite all 400 of your facebook friends to a facebook event for your birthday.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take advantage. I like taking photos when the creative urge overtakes me, and I use Flickr to put them somewhere public. Unfortunately, there’s almost zero overlap between my Flickr contact and my real-life friends, so the chance of any of my actual friends seeing my new photos on their own quickly approaches zero. I always felt like a bit of a tool emailing or IMing links to Flickr to my friends. Conveniently, my Facebook friends list is a superset of my real-life friends, and Facebook handled the notification of new photos FOR me, so I could self-pimp without feeling bad about it.
Of all the web 2.0 / social-network shenanigans and sites, Facebook seems to have the most penetration into every-day life in Toronto. If I lived in San Francisco everyone I know would have a twitter and a pownce account, but that’s not the case. Facebook rocked for me because literally EVERYONE I knew under the age of 30 had an account. It was as common-place as sliced bread. It was a given that if you met someone new at a party, you could friend them on Facebook and keep track of them. Mention any other web 2.0 sort of site around most of the people I know in Toronto, and you’d get a blank stare back.
So given all of the utility and ubiquitous-ness of Facebook, why did I delete my account?
The problem with Facebook is how closed it is, and how it totally and completly owns your social network. Information goes in, and it don’t ever come back out. Everyone has a Facebook account now, but how long will that last? What happens when your social circle moves on? It comes down to owning your identity, an idea championed by Joshua Porter and others at Own Your Identity. The data I put into Facebook is unarguably mine. It’s my contacts, my relationships, my notes, my photos, my writings, but as soon as I post it, I lose almost all control.
To me, the ideal solution is to host my content wherever I choose and to bring it together in a way I like on one site that represents me. This blog is hosted on wordpress.com, my photos are on Flickr, my professional persona lives on LinkedIn. In so far as there is a comprehensive online representation of Zvi Zemel, it exists among those and a few other sites. What’s missing is a good way to bring it together and show it off to my real-life friends.
I’ll write more on that topic later.
As a Canadian, I’ve been wishing for the chance to buy an iPhone north of the border for a while now. We all knew that the iPhone would be a Rogers exclusive here, because Rogers is the only carrier with a GSM network in Canada. Experience with Rogers has taught me to temper enthusiasm with disdain for Rogers’ frequent tramplings of consumers rights and expectations. So, it was no big surprise to anyone when Rogers announced their iPhone service plans, the cheapest one costing $60 (plus a system access fee) and giving only 150 minutes and 400 megs of wireless data. Even the most expensive plan at $115 only gave 2GB of data, unlike the unlimited data given by AT&T in the states. Useless features like call display had to be bought as part of a $15 bundle.
The outcry online and in print media was stupendous, and rumours maintained that Apple had cut shipments to Rogers to a fraction of what they were supposed to be. Finally, Rogers seems to have caved in and now has a limited-time offer in place. Purchase an iPhone before Aug 31 and get a 6GB plan added on to any existing voice plan for $30.
With the first set of iPhone plans announced, I had absolutely no intention of getting the phone. This new data plan is pretty tempting, though. I’m currently a Bell customer with a corporate plan. The monthly bill on my decidedly not-smart phone is about $25, with taxes and the system access fee rolled in. If I switch to Rogers, I can get similar voice features plus the 6GB of data (which might as well be unlimited, really) for $65. It’s not a crazy rip-off, but also isn’t very cheap, especially when you consider that Rogers requires a 3 year contract. For a total of $2340 over three years plus $200 for the initial cost, I can carry an iPhone in my pocket.
What to do, what to do?
There are a few questions that aren’t answered by Rogers’ press release for the new data plan. Is visual voicemail included? I can live without it, but it’s part of the full iPhone experience, and I would have imagined that Apple wouldn’t let their phone be sold without it.
Also, is the $30 price good for the life of the contract, or is it just a promotional price that will rise after one year?
Finally, without a crystal ball it’s impossible to know if this limited-time data plan offer will in fact become a permanent offer. It seems pretty silly to provide a deal like this for such a short time and then not replace it with anything meaningful. I’d hate to rush into buying an iPhone for this data plan and then see that some new “limited-time” offer supersedes it and gives a better value.
I think the best course of action is to wait and see.
