fgimenez

The common trope about "free" services is that you pay with your data. In light of the recent Instagram policy changes, I have wondered how much we actually value our data. So, I would like to know, if Facebook was willing to give us a choice to either:

1) pay with personal data

OR

2) pay with an actual monthly fee

Which would you choose?

What would be your upper limit to pay?

Is this for any data service, or would you pay different amounts for Facebook vs Instagram or others?

On a related note, Facebook revenue for 3rd quarter of 2012 was 1.26 Billion [1]. Their total user base is 1.01 Billion [2]. That translates to ~$1.25 quarter/person or ~$0.41 month/person.

Obviously Facebook's value is in huge data sets, i.e. the value of the population is greater than a sum of its parts. Nonetheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to possibly be able to pay your way to privacy.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/technology/facebook-revenue-surpasses-forecasts.html?_r=0

[2] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/number-active-users-facebook-over-years-214600186--finance.html

I just started graduate school and have found that an enormous factor in my work is writing clearly. While I did decently in my writing classes in undergrad, I feel that I was able to hid behind obfuscated ideas and complicated sentences. Now I actually want others to read and understand my work.

Peers and advisors are good resources, but they are very busy and often don't have the time to pick apart awkward sentences and deep stylistic issues. I am signed up for writing workshops, but I also want a more instant feedback system. Hence, I have been looking into automatic grammar/style editing software.

Current solutions I have looked into are: * Grammarly (http://www.grammarly.com/) * Whitesmoke (http://www.whitesmoke.com/)

Does anybody here have any familiarity with the above software or other recommendations?