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Paid Is The New Free

November 14, 2008 in Business, The Internet with 0 Comments

Saw this blurb on MarcPorcelli.com, and thought it was interesting.

Still others like the worlds largest free online dating site, PlentyOfFish.com (POF) are perhaps beginning to hit a wall. Here is what CEO Markus Frind said recently, “The problem with free is that every time you double the size of your database the cost of maintaining the site grows 6 fold. I really underestimated how much resources it would take, I have one database table now that exceeds 3 billion records. The bigger you get as a free site the less money you make per visit and the more it costs to service a visit.

Never really stopped and thought about the point of diminishing returns that happens at a certain point when you are running a free (ad supported) service.

Good Internetting Amtrak!

October 8, 2008 in Business, The Internet with 0 Comments

By now you probably have at least seen this, which is awesome. But here is a bit more awesome Amtrak internetting!

I was looking at trains from Boston to NYC, and on the dates I was looking, there is some 10 options to NYC and some 3 options back…lots of combinations. I tried one and got this message:

Problem with Space Availability: Sorry, one or more segments of your itinerary may have sold out. Please select an alternate date or time, or call 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245) for assistance.

Fail!

But it doesn’t tell you which route is sold out at which time, just a generic sold out error message. So I tried a few more combos and got the same result. Starting over and searching again for the same stuff, gave the same result.

Is having a detailed error message indicating which route is sold out too much to ask? Or how about just not showing the routes on the selection screen that are sold out?

Worst iPhone App Ever

July 29, 2008 in Business, The Internet with 9 Comments

While kicking around app ideas here at the office, I had an idea for what I think could be the worst iPhone app ever. It’d be dead simple to build, and I’d call it “iPhone Discus”. Basically it would use the phone’s built in GPS to see how far you could throw your iPhone. Enter a location, throw, record location. That’s it.

The Application Market…Where Is It Going?

July 22, 2008 in Business, The Internet with 0 Comments

Not much of a post, but just an open question.

I get why facebook, apple, and others open their platforms to developers, it makes total sense. But what is in it long term for the app developers? What is the end game? Who is making this work from the developer side?

We have one foot in the iPhone application game, as do hundreds of others, but only a few companies seem to be making money from their applications…namely the ones that sell the app outright to the user.

Paid downloads right now are the dominant way that developers are going to make money. There are other ways to make money with an application. But the market is still very, very young, and we still need to be very, very careful. The iPhone is a beautifully designed device, and it would be a shame if advertising [on the iPhone] became like a lot of the Flash, interactive, interruptive, crap ads we see on the Web, quite frankly. If that happens, we’ve failed. I know some ad agencies aren’t going to like this, but quite frankly, we have to keep the interests of the user and developer in mind. (Via here)

And lately, it seems that the once white hot facebook app market is cooling way down. Big guys like Slide and RockYou are getting slapped by facebook, the once super-cool hack-athons are now totally lame, and even those companies brokering the application ads are struggling to make ends meet.

So where is this all going?

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