The series of User Experience (UX) posts is brought to you by Qonita Shahab, a researcher in UX who used to work in IT. Her interest in music and photography helps her in designing interactive system prototypes. Since she started research in the field of persuasive technology, Qonita studied more about social psychology and the communal use of technology. Follow her on Twitter @uxqonita.
Have you heard of “Stop complaining about Facebook’s changes, it’s free for God sake!”? Have you been labeled as whiner just by talking about it? I’m among those who talked about it, but I didn’t buy the whiner label. After all, what I did was giving them valuable inputs.
Besides, I also don’t agree that Facebook is free. Of course financially we don’t pay anything to Facebook, but this approach has been in practice for too long: giving free access to a product (of parts of it) lowers the barrier to adopt the product. We may wonder, until when will Facebook keep being free? Will in the future Facebook suddenly charge us something?