My Faves

A major mobile phone company now lets you choose your favorite tele-friends. And they’re going to cut you a break on the cost of calling them.

Who are your faves?

Sound like a foreign, slangy question that your high-school daughter might toss around. It may be, sort of.

“Your faves” is the latest marketing scheme in a succession of cell-phone gimmicks designed not to merely draw individual customers, but tribes and clans and cliques of customers. Telecom doesn’t just want you, they want you and all the people you call the most to link up and commit to using the same cellular company. In exchange, your inner circle talks and texts for free.

For example, one of America’s largest cellular carriers allows you to designate your five favorite people with whom you want to share unlimited free calling. They call these five designees “My Faves.” The word is a made-up abbreviation, of course, following the cultural trend to shorten the language to make text messaging easier.

Another carrier calls the same free-call group your “IN network.” One’s whole phonebook gets split into two...