Would Facebook let me pay them $5?

According to documents Facebook filed ahead of its IPO, their average revenue per global user works out to just under five bucks a year. That's a number that'll surely grow over time (and in fact it has to, if they're going to be worth the $100 billion or so they're expected to IPO at), but the very fact that there is a specific dollar amount I'm worth to them made me wonder: why can't I just pay Facebook that amount per year and opt out of them sharing my personal data? (Not to mention get out of having to look at ads or deal with any lame marketing.) I already spend a lot more than $5 per year on a lot of services, so it certainly wouldn't be a burden for me to do so, and I'd surely gain a lot from protecting my privacy. I know the answer, or at least I think I know the answer, which is that offering a premium membership like that would only make it glaringly for obvious for everyone the business Facebook is really in, and that tension between appearances and reality might undermine the whole operation.

Now I quit using Facebook a couple of years ago, and don't miss it at all, but I certainly see the value in having a platform for sharing stuff with family and friends and tracking my social relationships. The fundamental problem is that Facebook's business model is to leverage those relationships and the content and data that flow out of them in order to create a gigantic online advertising and marketing machine. It's a cliche to say it, and we've all probably read this a few times by now, but with Facebook the users are the products being sold.

So if Facebook won't take my $5 in exchange for protecting my privacy, maybe there's an opportunity for someone else to build an alternative. You'd have to do something really difficult, and that's require people to pay to use it, but you'd also be building a business where the users are your customers, and you'd be focused on protecting their privacy and data, rather than selling it, and at the end of the day you'd be answerable to them (or at least their pocketbooks). I'm not holding my breath, but ultimately we need to be aware of the trade-offs we're making and that sometimes you have to be the customer if you want to be treated like.

Open office hours on Thursday, January 26th

I had a goal of hosting open office hours at least once a month. I didn't manage it last month -- the holidays made things a little too hectic -- but I am scheduling them for this month. If you're in or near New York and want to get thirty minutes with me, please sign up here.

I wrote something over at gdgt arguing that RIM needs to abandon BlackBerry 10 and adopt either Android or Windows Phone. Pretty great responses so far.

Finding a home for a broken OLPC XO-1

  I donated my original OLPC XO-1 to the Columbus School for Girls today. I bought one when they were first available via the Give One Get One program back in 2007, but it'd be mainly sitting in a closet since then. It wouldn't boot when I tried to fire it up the other day, and after a little sleuthing discovered that these early models had an issue with their Real Time Clock battery if they weren't used regularly. There's a fix, but it's more trouble than it's worth, so after some searching online I found that the Columbus School for Girls has a program where they repair broken OLPCs and bring them, along with new ones that are donated, to a school in the Caribbean. Seemed like it'd find a good home there, and I was very glad to find a program that does something like this.

How I use email

About three or four years ago I resolved to get my inbox under control -- like most people I was having a tough time keeping up with everything -- and after a few weeks I was able to get there. Here's what I do to stay on top of my inbox (and apologies if these are just completely obvious things to do): 1. Use Gmail

I know this isn't an option for everyone and that there are plenty of people who don't like Gmail, but switching from a POP3 client (I used to Thunderbird) to a cloud-based system was a big help for me. Seriously, before I used Gmail everything was mess. I couldn't keep things in sync and I had a huge backlog of unanswered messages. Gmail's system of threading and starring messages took a little while to get used to, but now I find it indispensable. Plus I can access my email on multiple devices without having to worry about keeping everything in sync. It's something we take for granted now, but it's hard to remember just how difficult this was for most people.

2. Don't leave any messages unread

When you go through your inbox, delete everything that isn't important right away. Don't let anything sit unread, even if you already know whether you're going to delete it or respond to it. Seriously, don't do it.

3. Then either reply, archive, or star

Once you've deleted everything that's not important, you need to either: reply to anything that needs an immediate response (or that can be responded to quickly), archive anything that doesn't need a response but that you do want to file away somewhere, and star anything that you can deal with later.

4. If you can, take your time getting back to people

Email begets email, so unless you really need to get back to someone right away, feel free to just star their message and get back to them later. Otherwise they're just going to reply to your response and then you're right back where you started. That star is your reminder to yourself to deal with it later, so unless it's urgent, don't feel bad about getting to it when you can. It's OK to have up to a couple dozen emails in your starred folder.

5. Use your phone to keep an eye on your email -- but don't obsess over writing back from your phone

I've been using my phone for email ever since I bought my first Treo in 2003, but I try not to write many emails from my phone. Rather then tap out messages on my phone, I use it mainly to process emails that come in whenever I'm out and about. Unless there's something that requires an immediate answer, I'll star anything that needs a reply and then hit them when I'm back at a computer and can more efficiently crank them out. Sure, there are times I'll be in a cab with nothing to do and so I'll hit a few messages, but unless you have some downtime you're probably better off saving all those responses for when you're at a PC and can write them more quickly.

6. Try to minimize how much noise hits your inbox

This is easier said than done, right? I don't use Priority Inbox -- I don't trust an algorithm to make filter properly -- so instead I try and eliminate emails that I know aren't going to be important from hitting my inbox in the first place. Most people underestimate how much noise makes it into their inbox each day. Here's my rule: If you find yourself deleting a recurring newsletter or notification or whatever from someone without reading it more than a two or three times in a row, either unsubscribe or create a filter that routes those emails out of your inbox and into the trash. It seems easy to just manually delete all those emails as they come in, but you'll be less overwhelmed by your email if you just suck it up and keep them out of your inbox altogether.

7. Create filters

Part of minimizing that noise is creating filters for messages you want, but that aren't super important. I don't mind getting Fab.com and LivingSocial-type emails, but I don't want them inundating my inbox, so I have a folder just for those that I filter all of those into. Same thing with notifications from any social network I've joined or email list I'm on that I don't want to leave but also don't want to be distracted by. Again, it's easy to just delete stuff as it comes in, but we underestimate the cognitive burden that accumulates from doing that. Taking twenty seconds to create a filter is a pain, but they're a small investment in lessening your inbox overload.

Anyway, I know everyone's situation is different, so I'm not going to pretend I've developed some universally perfect system, but I thought others might find it useful to hear what I did. It's definitely worked for me.