Downloads and being social

Web 2.0 certainly encourages a lot of social interaction and facilitates exchange of information very well. However it uses a lot of upload and download to do it. My internet connection has a limit of 1Gb and I have found that this gets used up very quickly once you start loading your iGoogle page each time you log in, or start sending or receiving videos. I will need to upgrade (at added expense) to a bigger capacity if I am to continue using these features.