Why Purple? And Why Minutes?
I’ve been thinking about Purple Minutes lately. I want to be clear, I don’t disagree with the *concepts *behind purple minutes, I just disagree with the name.
Why purple? I dunno why Jeff Pulver chose the color purple. Maybe he likes it. It’s a nice color.
The concept of “minutes” is a holdover from conventional telecom where you can, and still do, pay by the minute. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I rarely think about how many “minutes” I communicate with someone over some kind of telecom or IP network. I open a communication channel, whether it be over a VoIP service, my phone line, my mobile, over SightSpeed, IM, or whatever, I don’t think in terms of minutes. I just communicate.
The cost of “minutes” is said to be approaching zero. When it does become truly zero, will be still refer to them as minutes? Will we care how long a communication takes place? Probably not.
I think by referring to “minutes,” we are carrying forward this ridiculous notion of billing by the minute. If we really want to move away from the old telecom paradigm, we should come up with a name that reflects a new way of thinking about communications.
So if we don’t call them purple minutes, what do we call them?
