Re:When free sucks
by andywhite37 on Wednesday March 23, 2011 @01:41PM
(#2360417)
I think people need to just get over it. It's a free service. Almost every good, free service on the internet has some amount of annoying advertising.
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But at what point is that annoyance more of a cost than what the customer would pay?
I wouldn't pay for Twitter because I barely use it, but I would gladly pay for Mint.com to get rid of the ads, suck up valuable screen space on an app I use daily. And I do pay for Remember the Milk so I know it stays around. I'd pay for Gmail and Google Calendar.
But everyone is afraid of charging. Some users would surely switch away if you had to pay, but many wouldn't. How much productivity did Gmail originally bring to the table? Did they capture anywhere near that value via ads?
You can pay for gmail and google calendar via Google Apps. I think that business model is "give it to home users for free, get corporate users to pay."
No one will pay for Twitter. That's their problem.