Facebook faux pas and the water wells
May 26, 2010 Uncategorized
Facebook faux pas and the water wellsFacebook has been making bad press lately because of the apparent disdain for users’s privacy. Much has been discussed about this and it has led to this response on the Washington Post by founder Mark Zuckerburg ; a non-apology by some reputable critics ( Kit Eaton, Molly Wood ). The crux of the complaints stem from the practice by Facebook where users are opted into privacy settings make their data public by default. A more acceptable policy is to keep this data private by default and let users decide when they make that information public.
With more than 400 million active users and second to only Google Facebook is clearly THE water well of the internet making them a very dominant arena on the internet.
Social media evangelists have spoken and the world has finally stood up to pay attention. In a race to cement their platform as the de facto standard for social media, Facebook has made available tools such as FacebookConnect as well as Facebook LIKE button. These tools make it possible for many websites to tap into that Facebook water well and get closer to those 800 million idle eyes. Business has paid attention.
This brings me to my question. As business taps into social media platforms controlled by other business entities, what is that point that will make business turn around and run for hills to look for other social media water wells (QQ, Baidu, Orkut, Hi5) ?
Does this signal the forming of other social media networks that are accountable to the users ? Who is going to pay for them ? Perhaps a model such as the one we see formed by other commercial conglomerates such as this one.
Is this the scarecrow that finally forces us to turn the chapter and move on to the next Fad?
Facebook faux pas and the water wells
Uncapped 3G, Capped Disappointment
May 18, 2010 Uncategorized
Uncapped 3G, Capped DisappointmentMTN have announced the availability of their uncapped data packages from 1 June 2010. I think this is significant as this is the first of its kind among the cellular network providers. While I welcome the arrival of an uncapped data from a cellular provider it has to be asked, whom is this product for ? I can’t help but ask given the R749 and R1 999 price points !
The other question is, why two prices ? Well in South Africa like most things, a historical context may help explain things.
For a long time now, South Africans have looked upon their international counterparts (read Europe, S.Korea and USA) with gleaming eyes. What with their unlimited internet access and generous definition of broadband upwards of 8MBps. While in contrast, our broadband packages have been on the rather puny and limited 3 Gigabyte Telkom ADSL account; their flagship at the time later revised upwards to 5 Gigabytes. The awareness of this vast difference in broadband experience has incubated a pent-up and insatiable demand for MORE DATA among South Africans.
Since our service providers have limited experience in supplying uncapped data it is understandable that MTN would immediately seek to put some limits in order to manage expectations of performance. They need only look back t0 the Afrihost experience which was handled fairly reasonably i think.
So the two prices relate to the two levels of usage; 3 Gigabytes at R749 and 10 Gigabytes at R1 999.
Why the dissapointment ?
- Well first of all the price. R749 is high; one can get away with an unlimited package under R500 per month, at far higher thresholds; granted at much slower speed.
- Marketers must learn to use words that require less qualification when advertising their product. Granted, I have not seen any marketing campaign for the product but unlimited must mean unlimited experience. Not fast experience for the first 3 gigabytes then a slow down.
On the other hand, the product is here. I think given the fact that MTN have had trouble with DATA BUNDLE BILLING in the past, the innovations they have made on their data offering since fixing those billing issues are enough to get me thinking about returning to MTN to suppliment my data appetite.
Welldone MTN
Uncapped 3G, Capped Disappointment