Do you use Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, or the endless list of Google services for your business?

How many of them are “free”?

Now, define “free” for me.

For YEARS I have been telling my clients, friends, family…even strangers who start up conversations with me about the Internet [while I am wolfing down a Panera Fuji Apple Salad and doing my online College classwork] that there is NOTHING FREE on the Internet.

Immediately, they disagree and come back with an entire list of free services, as I did above.  Sometimes I smile and continue to eat and work…other times I explain what they give up for those “freebies”….and sometimes – if they are REALLY interested – I tell them the true cost of those freebies (data centers, datalines, staff, legal review, coders, testers, etc).

Anything you get for FREE has a price.  The price tag for the services that I listed above is YOU.  You are the price tag.  YOU are their target for behavioral marketing, search, and other services those listed businesses actually sell.

I believe we have all gotten far too used to the “freebies” on the web, we have all become “comfortably numb” (thanks Pink Floyd) to their real cost, and then when someone takes away your “assumed right” to privacy, you scream.

It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee – either pay for a similar service where you have the right to your privacy, or assume YOU are the price for free use of their service.  Those, really, are your choices.

[Source: Online PhD Programs for MashableMashable.com]