I think that the whole Facebook dust up around privacy really has brought us a new pick any two triangle diagram:
The New Pick Any Two
When it comes to some kind of online services you only get to pick two of: privacy, no effort, and no cost. With free services, that you don’t have to manage yourself, it should be no surprise that you have to give up privacy.
I’m sure there is a better wording for the pyramid, or even a better distillation of the legs. If you’ve got any thoughts on that front, please post a comment.
“No effort” could be “low maintenance” and “no cost” could be “free”
Free might be better, though it is overloaded. Low maintenance still implies some maintenance, and I’m not sure that fully gets the difference between running your own wordpress and blogger, for instance.