Okay, I’m not suggesting that the buffet of free online services is going to disappear any time soon but there’s no doubt that being able charge people to use a service is becoming more of a necessary strategic issue for many companies.
Even Google – the King of Free – is starting to encourage people to pay $50 for Google Apps as opposed to two years ago when it declared the product was totally free.
Have the chickens finally home to roost? Has the Web 2.0 ecosystem finally realized that giving away your product for nothing makes little or no sense? It may have not come to that just yet but revenue – now know as the “R” word – is moving into the spotlight.
And we’re not talking about “freemium”; we’re talking about charging a price to use a service that’s useful.
2009 could go down as the year the Web got real when it came to embracing business models based in economic reality.
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The End of Free?
Okay, I’m not suggesting that the buffet of free online services is going to disappear any time soon but there’s no doubt that being able charge people to use a service is becoming more of a necessary strategic issue for many companies.
Even Google – the King of Free – is starting to encourage people to pay $50 for Google Apps as opposed to two years ago when it declared the product was totally free.
Have the chickens finally home to roost? Has the Web 2.0 ecosystem finally realized that giving away your product for nothing makes little or no sense? It may have not come to that just yet but revenue – now know as the “R” word – is moving into the spotlight.
And we’re not talking about “freemium”; we’re talking about charging a price to use a service that’s useful.
2009 could go down as the year the Web got real when it came to embracing business models based in economic reality.
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