On Sep 22, 2008, at 11:18 AM, Jared Spool wrote:
On Sep 22, 2008, at 12:44 PM, Christine Boese wrote:
What if the whole idea of a "revenue model" is the wrong question?
Coming in
from left field here, but does anyone ask, "What is the revenue
model of the
Boston Commons? The town square?"
I see.
So the $496,000,000 that has been poured into Facebook by Microsoft,
Li Ka-shing, and the other venture capitalists should be thought of
as a public-service project?
Someone is going to have to do it.. Might as well be Facebook since
they could probably withstand the backlash.
That is... charge $9.99 a month to have an active account. A free
account would still exist but gets severely limited.
Seriously... that was the model that worked for America Online. Just
charge a service fee for ... service! Not sure why that's such a bad
thing.
Most of the folks in the internet space are going to have to realize
that if they want to make money, they'll probably to actually charge
their customers at some point. Advertising will only get all of us so
far, and will probably only work for a few select companies. Charging
money isn't actually a bad thing. In fact, it can be argued it's the
responsible thing to do. And further, it can also be argued that if
everyone stopped making everything "free" we could all move back into
building real businesses with real sustainable revenue models instead
of everyone rolling the dice and hoping to get bought.
In fact, I'm willing to lay good money that if Google announced they
would be charging $49 a year for access to their "cloud apps" like
Docs and GMail, they'd only lose at most 33% of their current customer
base, and probably a lot less. I mean... seriously... $49 a year is
still massively cheaper than paying $200+ for Office. And I'd also be
willing to bet Google can keep the advertisements in their cloud apps
while doing so.
This broaches a larger discussion, but it's long been a problem that
people will pay for hardware with services -- like say your cell phone
and SMS data plan or such -- but somehow think software should always
be free.
--
Andrei Herasimchuk
Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world
e. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
c. +1 408 306 6422
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