In asking whether the kerfuffle over the Skype outage means many people have become too dependent on it, Aiden Henry ends his post with a provocative question: “Are we too dependent on free services like Skype?”.
It’s a particularly poignant question given one of the pillars of the Web 2.0 economy is “free”. In return for attracting thousands of users to a free service, companies can then lean on advertisers who want to go after large audience focused on a particular area/sector. It is a business model that has thrived in recent years based on the idea that a rising online advertising market will raise all start-ups.
This assumption raises two questions:
1. Is the “free business model sustainable in the long-run for other than a handful of dominant players (e.g. Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc.)? If the answer is “no”, then will businesses have no choice but to embrace “freemium” whereby you offer basic service for free and then charge for more features?
One of the major problems right now with attempting to get anyone to pay for anything is there’s too much competitive. The moment you implement a subscription fee – even for a really good service – there’s someone else just a click away wiling to offer it at no cost. And as far as I can tell, the freemium model has yet to gain much momentum although it appears that some players such as Freshbooks are doing well with it.
The second question is: what are the expectations of people using a free service?
If, for example, you’ve never paid a penny to use Skype can you really complain too much when it goes down for awhile? Sure you’ve become dependent on it as an everyday communications tool but what do you expect for nothing? The same goes for any other free service online. Of course, most online users believe they have an inherent right not to pay for anything but still get top-notch service, which means they complain vociferously when things go awry.
Don’t get me wrong, having your service go down is a bad thing because if enough users get frustrated and decide to leave for a rival, it means advertisers could go away too. But the reality is this sense of entitlement among online users is unrealistic because expecting to get everything for nothing is just wrong.
More: Skype has come out with an explanation about why its service crapped out.
3 Comments
Well, I pay for a Skype In number and Skype Out credits. I use Skype as my main office phone – so, yes, I expect more from them.
What sucks is that I didn’t get a single update from Skype. I had to rely on reports from the web.
Yes, I agree with Andy. Since I have pre-payed for skype call outs I expect more. in fact, the problem is not free vs pay as everything can break down but at least if you are not satisfied with the service you can reclaim. Not the case of skype though.
In any case, I have already made up my mind to change after my credit will be off as i have been experiencing lots of “corrupted” calls for the last two months for which i have been charged since they changed their policy and started to charge for connections even if you just hear noises from outer space.
Take care.
if you get a corrupted call place service call for each one and paste in the call log and you’ll get money for those back. I repeatedly did this and now I get good clear skype calls most of the time, so I like to think the fact they were giving me refunds may have made them target improvements to my neck of the internet
David
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