The concept of using a free version of your service as advertising for a paid one has been around for a while, but TechCrunch's MG Siegler just profiled the technique along with a list of apps he thinks should adopt this model.

MG notes some of the benefits that the freemium model offers consumers (above and beyond keeping their favorite startups fed).  One of his favorite is differentiation - offering the users of free services the ability to pay for the same service to weed out the riff-raff who wouldn't put their money where their mouths were.

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The guys over at Peanut Labs put together a really interesting panel this week about strategies people are using to make money online (specifically in the social games space).

Some interesting anecdotes:

• TV-style programming works on the Web.
  If you're a Heroes fan, you know what's going on every Monday night - as a matter of fact, you look forward to it every week and plan accordingly. Websites can benefit from this same psychology. Pogo games sees a healthy jump in traffic every Tuesday morning. They program for it.
  
• Create strong emotions in your users and make it really easy to transact, unless you're chicken.
  Virtual world games are very popular in Asia. One particular game became a hangout for swingers. Frequently, a disappointed member would spend ten real dollars to buy advertising warning away fellow members from less than desirable mates.
  
• Collect a little bit of money from everybody, all day long.
  When I was a kid, we'd spend $20-30 on a video game cartridge - now they seem to start at $50. The pay-as-you-go model many gaming sites now use, where power-ups are bought as-needed during gameplay, enables serious gamers to spend serious money. The panelists expect the average user to spend at least a few hundred dollars per game, with passionate players sometimes spending hundreds of thousands.
  
• Even nerds appreciate a little affection.
  It's generally easier to automate the tedious work than to do it by hand every time, but humans have a special place in our hearts for the handcrafted. IGG was able to triple its revenue in six short months by hiring humans to organize group games, rather than letting the bots do it.

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The SmarteCarte people will rent you power to charge your phone/ notebook for $3.

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One of the major creators of the software that converted mortgages into securities just published an article about it.

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On sale at Jamba Juice. . .

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Kick everyone out of your mall early.

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Even if his games only break even, Jeff Vogel would rather be building his own stuff than working for someone else:

What was my reward for the year spent writing Geneforge 4? It wasn't just the cash. I also own the game! That means, in ten years or so, I can return to it, give it better graphics and interface, add a bonus 2-3 dungeons, and release it to a new generation of gamers. . . immensely profitable.

Don't underestimate the value of owning your own intellectual property.

from his blog

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At least 70% of the people I've ever heard mention it think that the iPod Touch is called the iTouch. 

 
Even my iPhone's autocorrect just made the mistake.

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I just found a very interesting article on why silly nonsense on sites like YouTube makes them very effective for dissidents trying to evade Big Brother. Like the books you read in philosophy class, it's long winded, but thought provoking, so I'll distill it into its main points:
 

• The most interesting little-guys are usually nobodies. It's difficult to trust self-defined activists because there's the lingering idea that they got what was coming to them. Empathy is easier to elicit for someone who gets spontaneously mauled by a bear than for the bugger who was throwing rocks at it. 

  People who are thrust into activism by the situation-at-hand don't know any better than to use the same tools they use in their personal lives (Blogger, YouTube, etc). for their causes as well. 

• Most of what people do on user-generated sites is both personally-valued and politically irrelevant. What if 100,000 people couldn't see pictures of their grandkids anymore because the Kremlin didn't want anyone to stumble upon a handful of compromising photos that also happen to be on Flickr? 100,000 new people would learn about the problem that censors were trying to keep on the down-low, and then they'd tell all their friends.

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Growing up in the 90s, I used to watch a lot of big technology keynotes (Macworld, et al.).  Sun cofounder Scott McNealy gave one about the time Java was introduced that still deeply resonates with me.  He envisioned a future where programming was easily accessible:  It didn't take an overpriced, poorly communicative engineer to build something for you.  You were empowered to create your own personalized tools, all by yourself.

At the time, AppleScript or HyperCard enabled this in a limited way.  Now we have JavaScript and ActionScript - both are quite powerful and commonly available; however, they can be a bit intimidating and unfamiliar for many people.  These same people can probably scratch their own itches with Excel though. . .

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 Unsurprisingly, a similar communication breakdown plagues much of the federal bureaucracy.

 Like any good freelancer (who haven't been nominated for Obama's cabinet), I have to pay my taxes quarterly. To do so, I had to register for the EFTPS's online payment system. In the letter confirming my registration, my name is misspelled, alongside a request that I call in with any corrections.

 In an attempt to avoid the IRS's painfully unorganized automated call tree, I called the EFTPS. Making it clear that they are a separate Treasury division, the agent explained to me that while they consume the IRS's data, he cannot push any changes upstream: It would take another half an hour of waiting on hold with the IRS to get this stupid typo fixed. Annoyed, I asked the EFTPS agent if he thought his relationship to the IRS was similar to that between the FBI and the CIA before Homeland Security. Laughing, he refused comment.

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Fred Seibert was one of the creators of MTV and Nickelodeon.  He's pioneered Oh Yeah! Cartoons and What-a-Cartoon.  Next New Networks is his current project, where he's trying to become the curator for online video.

I interviewed Fred a couple of years ago, when Next New was just launching.  He pointed out that there's a direct corelation between his personal success and the number of artists he knows.  To keep himself in the minds of animators everywhere, Fred runs Channel Frederator (a podcast of user-created cartoons) and Channel Frederator RAW, a digital watering hole for said animators.

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(via TechCrunch)

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