Hmmm… Over the past weeks (and months) I have been deluged by a stream of firms that want me to resell or recommend their products. Now I realise that it is nothing personal and that they are just mailing the world, but I find it rather interesting.
Products and services that, up until now, would have cost money, are being “given” away. I say “given” as typically you get a reduced level of service, but still, I have been able to get some web sites hosted for nothing (thank you 5quid host). This was good for me as it let me test their service and was good for them as I soon ran out of space and have started to pay for more, but I could have used the 40Mb they originally gave me forever and a day for free.
I get this mode of selling, with disk space relatively cheap the only cost to them is bandwidth, and I assume they bulk buy that so the trial uses are a drop in the ocean.
What I cannot see is how firms such as Twitter are going to monetise what they do. You can get free, open source microblogging platforms that can be installed on you own server, that will give the same functionality. The only thing that Twitter has is the head of steam it has built and the press it is getting. But even with that “So What??” Would I pay to be on twitter? I don’t know. It certainly has an impact on the traffic to my sites (not huge, but noticeable) but would I pay for it? Would I tolerate someone else’s adverts on my tweets? Probably not as they would likely be competing with whatever it was I was trying to say.
Certainly the podcasting/publishing industry has cottoned on (or at the very least is beginning to wake up) to the fact that giving away your stuff is a good way to success (ala Scott Sigler et al). See, I like his stuff so much that I have plugged him and will probably buy the book that he is in the process of giving away. But the big difference is that he has a “product” that he wants to sell. I guess that the Twitter product is Twitter itself. Are they just waiting for someone to buy them? Or is there some other sinister plan?
The only answer that I can see is that at some point they will start to inject advertising into the stream. Much like Facebook has lots of info about you that allows them to channel ads, Twitter can see who you are following and hence what you like. The stars such as Stephen Fry, Robert Llewellyn, and Adam Curry, ok may be not Adam :) are attracting a large following, I’m sure that ads dropped into Brittany's stream must have a value. Or will it have a negative effect? Will people just jump to another platform that does not have ads?
Actually, I think the answer is slightly different. I think that if they inject ads some people will move and some will stay. As has been shown by other services, every dog has it’s day. So though they may accelerate the demise I do not think that they will kill Twitter. All that will happen is that something else will come along, as it would have done anyway, that offers other, better?? alternative functionality, and people will jump ship.
Ok, what has this got to do with the price of eggs? Well it’s all just a comment on the state of the world. To survive in the modern internet you need to have a level of faith in mankind, that you would not have in the real world. You need to believe that, if you give your stuff away, people will pay for it anyway. This is actually quite refreshing.
Maybe it will be a brighter future.
No comments:
Post a Comment