How Long Can The Free Services Stay Free? 200
A nameless cretin writes: "Yahoo and
Bigfoot
are both noted for providing free services.
They both seem to be planning to add fees for selected services.
Yahoo's "Yahoo! by Phone" service,
also known as "1-800-MY-YAHOO",
provides various information services via voice phone, including the
ability to retrieve e-mail. According to
this page
they are planning to charge a monthly subscription fee beginning
May 7, 2001.
Bigfoot provides a variety of e-mail services, such as relaying and
filtering. They do not provide mail boxes. Although some of their
pages
still indicate their services are free, some member pages
(requiring member login) indicate a $19.99 annual subscription fee will
be required for many of their services.
Although I am disappointed in these changes, I would like to thank them
for the service they have provided us. I hope they are able strengthen
themselves financially and continue to exist. I also hope they explore
new means of providing free service." Any other free-beer services you've noticed being shut down or leaning suspiciously of late? It's been rather nice to have so many free email accounts in the meantime, eh?
Re:Internet ads (Score:1)
Oh, but J. Random User HATES the ad banners and popups. But guess what? Most people that are advertising on TV get WAY more exposure than they would on the Internet. And guess what, they're intrusive ads.
Take a smaller company, and internet advertising seems more affordable, but they run into a brick wall--they're advertising to people who don't want to spend money.
TV audiences spend money; internet audiences complain that they shouldn't have to. Except for buying stuff from ThinkGeek.
There's money in free email... (Score:1)
Other services like personal data. I am confident that free email will be around forever, if for no other reason than to collect the email addresses of all your acquaintences.
Think about it. Someone sends email to all their friends and family. The company that offers the 'free' service suddenly acquires a whole bunch of valid email addresses. The company then sells these email addresses to spammers.
The same business model applies to online greeting cards, send your friend this story news reports, and just about any other 'free' give-us-an-email-address service.
This model will dry up if the masses ever get smart enough to give their real addresses only to trusted people. The masses are not this smart, and for that I thank them :).
free email (Score:1)
The net will get along just fine w/o ad revenue. (Score:2)
Any just who is going to pay for that service?
You assume that just cuz companies start charging, that enough customers will pay to sustain the business. You are wrong.
Napster can't operate without charging fees? No worries. They'll disappear because no on will pay them. And when they're gone, as in nature when a dominant animal goes extinct, something else will pop up to take its place and flourish.
Newsflash! The net existed for a great many years before advertising was even legal on the net (pre 1994). And it will again after the venture capitalists/whiners are dead and gone.
The very existance of GNU proves beyond a reasonable doubt that people will still make good things available for free over the net. Music, images, etc. will still be out there. Even if only on users' personal web pages. And again, as before, search engines, like the early archie and veronica, will index it, again, all for free.
"Imminent death of the net predicted."
It's the same old shit all over again. The IT bubble guys, I guess, don't know how old that above quote really is.
The ads model isn't broken you fools! (Score:2)
Those of you with a subscription to WiReD or Time or something. Go and get a few issues from last year and put them in a stack. Now take the same issues for this year and make a seperate stack.
Notice something? This year's stack is significantly smaller. Why, you ask?
Everyone is making less money from ad revenue this year. The first thing companies cut when they foresee financial problem (since everyone does say The Economy Is Slowing!) is cut their advertising budgets.
Sure, this sucks for dot-coms that make their money from ads, but it also sucks for everyone that makes money from ads. The same arguments you could use for Yahoo's business model collapsing could be used for Time magazine. See, the difference here is that Yahoo is now painfully aware of how dependent they are on advertising. They have the ability to use multiple models, whereas Time does not have that luxury.
The dot coms are better. Stop crying and start buying them while they're so low. :)
Re:"Free software" is theft, for God's sake! (Score:1)
-Derek
Re:bigfoot had for-pay services for a long time (Score:2)
Yes, but the problem I have is that they've changed what's free and what's not. Some time ago, I set up a bigfoot web redirection service. That web site has now moved to a different server, so I went to update the redirection, only to find that I now have to pay for it. So my options are to either stick with the outdated URL, or change it to the new one, and pay a monthly fee in perpetuity. I've chosen the former option, with a pit of PHP on my old server doing the redirection to the new server...
Re:Victim of the Economy (Score:1)
Re:There is no free lunch (Score:2)
Any reference to "OneStop" in the above should be replaced with "1stUp".
1stUp was the backbone of many free internet services.
OneStop (.net) is a totally irrelevant ISP.
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
Re:There is no free lunch (Score:3)
Or the plain and simple elimination of those services. Take a look at OneStop: they were the backbone of *many* free internet access services, like what AltaVista was using. 1stUp would make it's revenues off a cut of the adds displayed by the client software onto the user's machine.
When the add market started to erode, OneStop saw that they wouldn't be able to expand, and simply stopped the service with about a month forewarning. AltaVista warned [about.com] it's users two weeks in advance. Many other providers simply did not.
My sister was one of those AltaVista users, and she was quite pissed at this. but, as I explained to her, they owed her nothing, as she has benefited from their service free of charge for many months.
You get what you pay for, in the end. My browser blocks adds too, because I'm sick of the screaming colors and abrasive distraction they bring to web pages. But this may, how long before Slashdot requires a login fee for anyone with less than 20 karma points?
I already pay for a descent web access (cable). Will it come down, eventually, to pay for Slashdot?
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
UK free fax - email service FaxMe also now pay (Score:2)
In the end it should be a good thing, as most of the free services ultimately have no path to profit or even being able to sustain themselves.
Re:Internet ads (Score:1)
Old fashioned trademark ads from big companies are way to uncommon, and they're the only ones who can actually afford it.
Internet ads (Score:5)
The money initially pumped into these companies is running out, so there is no one left to pay for the banners.
The Internet needs big companies to realize that it's a great place to advertise! We need Coca Cola ads, shampoo banners and all the crap we're used to from watching TV. Those are the ads that actually bring some real value to the advertisers as they need their trademark to be displayed everywhere you go.
It is time for the Internet to grow up. It's not going to be pretty, but it has to.
Who is talking about modems? (Score:2)
Re:Who is talking about modems? (Score:2)
Whether Free or Mot... (Score:3)
The real problem with all these e-mail forwarding services is spam. Their measures against it are simply inadequate -- I stopped using both bigfoot and then pobox because of their reliance on the MAPS DUL (dial up list). I object to this list on principle: The DUL is only and explicitly for the purpose of denying access based on the degree of connection the users can afford; but it doesn't even stop a lot of spam. The only effective anti-spam measure I've used is brightmail. Why free e-mail provides can't simply license that technology (which is what brightmail's business plan amounts to), I don't know.
No changes in Bigfoot (Score:2)
I would actually be happier to pay $20 to $40 per year for email forwarding - my main worry is that Bigfoot will go bust, since they have no visible means of support, and my email address will no longer be usable...
800 numbers cost much more than a few web pages (Score:2)
Just a wild-ass guess, but I'd assume Yahoo! pays at least $0.10-$0.20 for the average call to this service. There is no way to support that with ad revenue, even in the best of times, even at rates several times that of similar media (such as radio). On the other hand, you can serve hundreds or thousands of customers via the web for the same money. You could probably pay for it with ad revenue even in the current depressed ad market.
Don't read too much into this. Free 800 number service wouldn't have lasted that long even if the dot-com phenomenon hadn't imploded.
Re:Expecting free internet services. (Score:1)
Things that quicly come to mind, are the phone network (build it, switches are desigined to last 20 years, and just provide power, and you done...), and hydro power (build a dam, install a turbine and a generator and youve got free electricity in the spring forever...).
And it also works for non 'network' like services... R&D costs for pharmicitals is high, but the per unit manufacture cost is low as an example.
Your argument seems to be that the price of things should be related to the cost of production. In a market driven system the price of things is related to what the market can bare. If that greater then the cost of the item, the company stays alive. And if its less, the company dies.
Right now the goind theroy is that the price the market can bare is $0 for these online services. When the free services either die, or are forced into some kind of payment, the high quality content will dry up.
It remains to be seen weather or not the maket can bare a non-zero price on these things...
Re:Hopefully this brings more quality (Score:1)
Compared to Deja, groups.google is extremely fast. The onlything I would like to see is slashdot-style nested threads, but I'm sure that they are working on something. (DejaNews' outline was nice, but verry slow).
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Re:The cost isn't minimal at all (Score:2)
You're right that they didn't need to upgrade (even though Slashdot told me they were "About to Collapse Under Load"!) But any document where the "Business Justification" section fails to mention that they own both Hotmail and Windows and the obvious PR problem there, and instead blabbers about Unicode etc, really shouldn't be worthy of a
It is interesting that they are using Interix in production, tho.
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I generally agree, but... (Score:2)
In other words, I believe that a good number of these Internet businesses will start charging money, directly or indirectly, in the next year or two and have some success (about as much as can be expected, given that so many schemes were ridiculous). Furthermore, I firmly believe that the overinflation of the Internet by VCs, investment bankers, and the like has actually done far more to harm Internet businesses then it has to help. When the party line in the financial community is to grow grow grow at all costs, it essentially forced more stable strategies out the window. If you were a startup that needed capital, you had to accept that philosophy. Even if you were free from having to raise money, the problem was that all of your competitors were following this strategy, drowning out your more sober plans by essentially buying customers; very few startups can afford to go without significant revenue for long.
Re:I generally agree, but... (Score:2)
So yes, I agree that some customers were drawn online just because some things were free, but those services were mostly things that should never have been online. For services that offer the customer real value, customers will eventually come around to the realization that there is no such things as free lunch, and they will be willing to pay for it. In short, money will be made online, even if all of those that hyped it are now saying the exact opposite. Financially speaking, this is not terribly unlike the BioTech crash ~10 years ago. Just like the DotComs, the VCs, hedge funds, and investment banks were throwing money at anything associated with Biotech, no matter how stupid the investment was. The end result was that a lot of bad companies crashed and burned, taking good companies out with them in part or in whole (by sucking up good capital and/or distorting the market). Then, after the market crashed, those same VCs and such wouldn't touch very good companies. However, although solid companies were harmed while it was hyped and harmed when it crashed, astute investors that were willing to seperate themselves from the herd made a LOT of money, ultimately.
Re:Net ads vs. traditional (Score:1)
Maybe if the website viewing statistics were believed more...
Re:MY Question and comments (Score:1)
Re:Victim of the Economy (Score:1)
Re:MY Question and comments (Score:2)
Re:Victim of the Economy (Score:2)
Now, the place for the older machines is in the testing department. The testers are supposed to reflect a selection of supported customer configurations, so thats where the minimum system requirements boundary should be tested. It is far, far easier to tone down an application developed on a high-end machine than to build up an application on old hardware.
Those who want to learn, not troll,... (Score:1)
...are well advised to go straight to the source. Rather than asking provoking questions of people who probably don't know the correct answer anyway, it's always best to get your infromation staight from the horse's mouth.
If you want to learn about Red Hat Linux, why not
- Try looking first at the Red Hat web site [redhat.com]. There you will find a
- Support Page [redhat.com], which contains a link to the
- New To Linux page [redhat.com], where you can begin to educate yourself by reading their
- Introduction to Linux [redhat.com], as well as many other useful and informative documents.
Try it -- it's really easy, and fun too!Re:The cost isn't minimal at all (Score:1)
Very interesting and worthy of a front-page story IMHO, you should submit it (and probably already have I imagine). I'm not holding my breath expecting to see it posted, though. I thought the "Business Justification" section was very interesting:
An interesting read, though.
The cost isn't minimal at all (Score:1)
Sure, if you or I wanted to make a web-based email service the initial cost would be cheap. But you're not going to get the traffic necessary to support an ad-based revenue model unless you have plenty of users. And then when you have plenty of users, you're going to need more web servers and more bandwidth, so your costs are going to go up. That's why there's been consolidation among the free web-mail providers along with some just shutting down altogether or selling certain domain names that they promised their users that they could have for life (leaving many angry email users behind in the process).
As an aside, and likely to generate flames, Microsoft recently posted a case study [microsoft.com] of Hotmail's conversion from FreeBSD to Windows 2000.
Cheers,
Bigfoot (Score:1)
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Re:Victim of the Economy (Score:2)
Because efficient programmers are much, much more important than efficient software.
It is a simple, repeately proven fact that it is far quicker to develop certain classes of applications in Java than in C++.
The performance differences between the two are irrelevant; you can throw more hardware at a slow program to make it faster. Throwing more programmers at a late project (because the tools don't work for the job) make it later and probably buggier (due to incomplete understanding of what you're fixing/implementing).
-jon
Re:Hopefully this brings more quality (Score:2)
When I bought my new computer, I had
Windows, Internet Explorer, and Office pre-installed (for free)
Not quite. You paid for it, you just don't know you paid for it. Microsoft, whose biggest market is OEMs, like the company that made your computer, sold the software to your machine's manufacturer. The manufacturer's cost of the software, plus a small markup, is then built in to the cost of your machine. Had Windows and Office not been pre-installed on the machine, your machine would have been cheaper. By how much, I can't tell you, because Microsoft has a different deal with each OEM based on sales volume.
RedHat does not develop Linux. For the most part, Linux is developed by a worldwide team of volunteer programmers scattered across the continents and the 'Net. RedHat *does* provide some funding for open source projects and actually employs a few of those developers (including Alan Cox), but so does Corel (they have been funding wine development), Caldera (I forget what they fund), and other companies that don't even make a Linux distro like IBM, Compaq, and others. Nobody is "stealing" RedHat's work because all the work they and other companies do on Linux and other open source software is licensed under an open source license like the GPL. See the Open Source Initiative's website [opensource.org] for more information on the open source licenses like the GPL. There is a difference between free as in speech vs. free as in beer. Linux is free as in speech.
Re:Hopefully this brings more quality (Score:2)
Operamail (Score:1)
MailAndNews.com seemed a bit slow for me when I checked.
Re:Follow the Linux Methodology (Score:1)
You're in a tactically unpalatable demographic as from the appearance of your site, it caters towards the pre-teen market which is notoriously short of change. However, I would suggest doing a little thinking inside the cube
Best of luck
LL
Re:Free services not run by large corporations? (Score:3)
The client's point of view is even more important as it defines what custom you take and what ones you would reject. Put yourself in their shoes, if they had to hire you as an employee, what skills would you bring to add value to what they do? How can you demonstrate that without your time/skills/knowledge/stellar personality etc, they would be worse off?
It is not easy as you ned to do some very careful critical thinking but once you've identified your role, you can then work out the business model (costs/value/risks/etc). For example, (hypothetically speaking) if you believe your skills are in programming/development with some judgement as technological consultant to these community groups, then you can market yourself as a fractional CTO. Ie if you have 20 organisations, ask that you expect to spend 1 day/fornight workly sole with their technological infostructure (information infrastucture) which would be equivalent to 5% of a CTO salary at market rates. You then have to pay the costs of the server and bandwidth against this income but then that's just a matter of accounting and tax deductions plus an incentive to keep the costs down.
The key point is to ask yourself what business you are in
LL
Re:Victim of the Economy (Score:2)
Kind of. Certainly the team on the 486's will be forced to write more efficient software, but you have to ask yourself if it's really needed? If efficient software is necessary, explain java.
The more important point is that the team on 486's will ship way late. This has something to do with compilers being slower, the network being a dog etc. And one hell of a lot to do with pissed off software engineers not being arsed to do anything or leaving to go somewhere with better gear.
Never underestimate the power of 21" monitor.
Dave
Re:Internet ads (Score:1)
Ever wonder why Coke's little name says TM and not copyrighted? A copyright runs out, but a trademark is forever as long as you show you are actively promoting it. Sneaky little way, really. If the Beatles wanted to keep all the copyrights to their songs and keep Michael Jackson from owning some of them, they should have marketed themselves better and not filled out all that paperwork.
Don't you just love all the education some corporations will give you just to make sure you don't give away any of that IP or harm the trademark? I hated the classes, but somethings were kind of cool.
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Re:Internet ads (Score:1)
Advertising has everything to do with maintaining IP. Advertising shows possession for the IP holder, in addition to all the other stuff they have to do. The point of the post was to discuss the reasoning behind why Coke is trademarked and not copyrighted. If they copyrighted the ingredients in Coke they would have to disclose them. Disclosing them is revealing their IP. Coke will not sue someone for making something that tastes like Coke, only something that IS Coke.
Did you know that Coke has their own police force? They send out people to eat in restaurants who order a Coke. If they are brought Pepsi without being told it is a Pepsi, they report the establishment. The idea here is that the IP for Coke is being diluted and while the customer may know instinctively they are drinking Pepsi, they may still have the word Coke in their head.
Trust me...we had Coke people and lawyers in the room teaching us this. all I was doing was drawing attention to this fact.
If you want to see an intrusive ad, go to space.com [space.com] and see the Intel ad. Now THAT is intrusive and Intel is just like Coke in this respect.
Jeff
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1-800-Freeway gone (Score:2)
The service provided long distance in exchange for listening to an ad at the beginning of the call. 30 second ad gave you 2 minutes of long distance. I used the service often, and it came in very handy at payfones. According to their site [broadpoint.com] they seem to be still running, but for the past month or so, I can't get through the number--at first it was disconnected, now it just rings forever. So it looks like they're gone.
pobox (Score:2)
So, I just switched to pobox [pobox.com]. I think it's $15 per year for basic service, and offers mail forwarding just as Bigfoot does - the only thing I wish it would do is let me forward email to multiple addresses, but I can live without that for more stable service.
Re:There is no free lunch (Score:3)
----------------------------------------------
Re:www.555-1212.com... (Score:1)
No free lunch (Score:1)
Personally, if it's a service that's important to me, I'd rather know they're using a business model that a) will last and b) will reward them for providing good service. An ad-supported service is at the mercy of the advertisers. If they don't do well, then the site goes under. (Not to mention, that if you're beholden to the advertisers, you suddenly have a vested interest in not hosting content the advertisers don't like.)
But beyond that, an ad-supported site makes more money when it's better at getting ads in your face. It only needs to provide good enough service to keep eyeballs there. If they need to keep my $20/month or whatever, they're more motivated to make sure the thing works well.
Bottom line... I hope some of the sites I use -- including Yahoo -- start making more money directly off users and rely less on advertising. The only question is whether it will work. It'll be interesting to see how Salon's experiment [salon.com] works out.
Cheers,
Dave
I'll pay for Yahoo services (Score:1)
I think companies like Yahoo will always have basic free services, but I can see them rapidly moving towards subscription based "power user" services, which a certain class of customer (like myself) will be more than willing to pay for.
Regards,
jc
Re:I generally agree, but... (Score:1)
True, but you give short shrift to the option that many people consider the most likely: namely that a significant group of users give up on the internet. It's extremely possible that the entire internet as social tool will end up as relevant as the CB radio (still in use, but largely forgotten).
Commercial use will of course, still be with us.
But there's every likelihood of a migration back to the (mall, tv, library, etc.) on the social side.
Unlikely? About as unlikely as the entire dot-com sector coming down with an amazingly resounding crash.
NTK's take (Score:1)
From NTK (http://www.ntk.net) this week:
DESPAIR for remaining BIGFOOT users, whose "free e-mail
forwarding for life" looks to have an expectancy of somewhat
less than five years. "Times have gotten tough for Internet
companies such as ours", the company weasels, and goes on to
say they're spreading that "tough" sensation by limiting
mail forwarding to 25 messages a day. And even then,
subscribers have to provide "demographic information"
before the forwarding restarts. Given that most people
receive about that much mail in "GREAT INKJET DEALS" alone,
you can understand that the company would introduce this
change gently. But, so far, as far as we can tell, they
haven't mailed users, or put the policy change on its
Website - they just stuck it in the autoresponder FAQ at
help@bigfoot.com. How stealthily desperate can you get?
http://www.bigfoot.com/
I've just checked Bigfoot via help@bigfoot.com, and I got:
Our basic Forwarding service is free, but if you wish to use it, you will need to provide us with some demographic information, so that we may send you periodic emails from our partner companies. You will then be able to have up to 25 emails forwarded daily.
BBS's (Score:2)
some of the elements of services like yahoo phone (reading email over the phone, especially) have a good chance of surviving, just as some of the elements of old commercial bbs services survived. the fact that yahoo is going to charge for the phone service is a small part of a bigger picture. how long will it be before you can check your email at work by calling to check your voice mail? probably not too long.
if you're interested in using and keeping track of free services, I maintain a resource list at laslocomm.net [laslocomm.net].
Re:Donations..... (Score:1)
So yes, donations can work, depending on how you do it, and how your userbase is structured.
Re:There is no free lunch (Score:1)
DUL does not discriminate against modem users! (Score:1)
This is patentely wrong! The MAPS DUL does not discriminate against dial-up users, as they can send mail to whomever they want. Nor do the users of the DUL discriminate. If you want to send mail to someone, use your ISP's mailservers! That's what they are there for.
Consider: if you send email to George, and George's mailserver is down for a day because of Jethro and his backhoe, what happens:
Scenario A - you are sending the mail directly: Your client must connect every hour or so, and try to get to George's server, tying up your modem and phone line.
Scenario B - you are sending via your ISP's mailserver: You connect and send the message to your ISP's server. It then tries every hour until they get George's connection fixed, and you go about your merry way.
Which of these scenarios makes more sense?
Come on, I was on a dial-up for years, and I just tell my boxen to forward to my ISP's mailserver. It's not that hard, it saves me bandwidth, it just makes sense.
And for the argument that your ISP's mailservers suck: If your ISP cannot run its mailservers reliably, is your connection going to be any more reliable?
And for the argument that you wish to use somebody else's mailserver to receive mail: YOU CAN. Using your ISP's server to SEND your mail doesn't prevent you from retrieving your mail from some other server: that's why mail goes OUT on SMTP and comes IN on POP3/IMAP!
Lastly, for the argument that the DUL doesn't reduce SPAM: My ISP just went to using DUL filtering. My spam went from ten a day to one every couple of days.
Re:"Free software" is theft, for God's sake! (Score:1)
Hopefully this brings more quality (Score:3)
As so many free services get into trouble now, I think chances for offering quality services for a fee get better, which might benefit all who value their time and thus are prepared to pay a little for a better signal/noise ratio.
Dejanews is a good example: It was good, but not economically viable. Because of the "everything must be free" mentality, it was not yet relaunched as a for-pay service. Soon it might, and I would gladly pay a reasonable fee for the invaluable resource that a good usenet archive is. (groups.google.com is no good, is incomparable to the good old dejanews).
Subscriptions are cumbersome however, because when there are so many service to use you would have so many subscriptions to keep track of (and to cancel in time). What I would like is a system where I could subscribe to some services that I use heavily, and to pay-per-view for some that I would use only occasionally (like buying a separate newspaper as opposed to taking a daily subscription). However, until a single worldwide system for micropayments is established, this seems impossible.
Re:Victim of the Economy (Score:2)
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JUNO wants to sell subscriber's CPU cycles (Score:2)
2.5. You expressly permit and authorize Juno to
Re:JUNO wants to sell subscriber's CPU cycles (Score:2)
www.juno.com/corp/news/supercomputer.html [juno.com].
I couldn't find the TOS anywhere on their site; it's mailed to subscribers after they join.
Stop trying to impersonate Bruce Perens! (Score:2)
Free email is here to stay (Score:2)
1-800-My-YAHOO??? (Score:2)
My question to the /. community is: Are people interested in this email-and-other-info-by-phone technology?
I have absolutley no interest in it and it seems like I'm the only one. Why sit there and listen through all my emails when I can go to a computer and _read_ them all in a quarter of the time. And if its important, I have a cell phone... ?? It just seems like a lot of companies are pushing for this and its one of the few things I don't see any demand for
psxndc
Explore New Ways Of Providing New Service? (Score:2)
. I hope they are able strengthen themselves financially and continue to exist. I also hope they explore new means of providing free service.
This is the major problem with the mentality that the braindead Stanford MBAs foisted on the dotcomm world and the users of the Web. A business that spends money to give away its core product away for free is doomed to failure. The notable exception to this rule is television but even then quite recently they were all money losing ventures until the rise of cheap reality-television and talk shows which garnered high ratings without being expensive to produce.
The mentality of giving things away for free fucked the dotcomm world which in turn fucked the Tech industry which in turn fucked the economy. the sooner we lose it the sooner we'll be on our road to recovery.
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Re:pobox (Score:2)
Just go through the Modify Services section and change your Forwarding Address. That page has a button to allow you to add more addresses.
-- fencepost
Pop3Now (Score:3)
The distinguising feature of their service is that the connection between your browser and their site is SSL encrypted. If I'm checking mail from a public place, I figure it's much more likely that someone has slapped a sniffer on the public terminals than it is that someone's done the same on the networks at Pop3Now or my ISP (or in between), so that added bit of security is a nice thing to have. They also allow checking of up to 5 accounts, but with the page design using more than one or two can slow things down.
-- fencepost
Re:"Free software" is theft, for God's sake! (Score:2)
The next logical question is, why are you still here?
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The other shoe (Score:2)
Recently I've been struggling to figure out the answer to this question on my site - just when we started to make some money, almost enough to break even, the banner ad money dropped through the floor.
One possible service has been in Flashlink (http://www.flashlink.com) [flashlink.com], a system which has a series of member web sites (focused on computer/console gaming) that offer news, reviews, walkthroughs, etc. The catch? You have to pay $3.50 a month to access the web sites. That's not the amazing thing - the amazing thing is that its starting to make money.
I'm sure the fellow who runs Flashlink won't mind me quoting from his email to me:
The point? While free services in some way will always be around (search engines, some major news sites that can operate the web site as a loss to advertise their TV/Cable operations (like CNN)), it appears that people are beginning to recognize that there are things they have to pay for.
Pornography, for all the jokes we like to make about it, has been profitable on the Internet. Do they charge you money? Sure - but you pay because you can't get the information they have anywhere else. They provide a service some people want, and someone is always willing to pay, because they already know that porn isn't free - the second a site gets too popular, and hits skyrocket, and the bandwidth costs are too much for most ISP's to handle without asking for more money to operate.
Other sites that have been free for years will have to start charging for their services. Will people complain? Yeah - I mean, why pay Flashlink $3.50 a month for information they can get for free other places. But if the information is of a high enough quality (like exclusive game walkthroughs you can't find anywhere else, and excuse me for focusing on the game industry because that's what I'm into), people will pay. Would people pay for Tom's Hardware of Anandtech? Most would bitch and moan - but I'm willing to bed that for the quality of reviews/in depth information sites like that provide, there's enough people that would pay that would make it profitible.
Here's one last thought then I'll shut up. Linux is free - I like it, I use it. But for support, I either have to figure it out for myself or pay someone else to help me - and that's how the Linux industry proposes to make money. Web sites are going through the same evolution. Some things will be free, others you'll pay for. People have mentioned the need for "big advertising" (Coke/Pepsi, Levi) to get into Net ads - but I'd rather make money the "old fashioned way" - by selling something people want to pay for rather than having to prostitute myself. "I love playing Serious Sam - and speaking of serious, I love Coke!"
I'm curious to see how it goes. Things are going to start to get interesting as we figure out how to make it all work.
Of course, I could be wrong.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
Re:Leechers DESERVE to be broke (Score:2)
Hah! Loser...
Anyway, as you said "The very internet that you love so much is now going after you wallet. "
No, the very Internet I love is coming back...
Less commercial clap-trap, more useful discussion, is what I'd like to see.
My pick for best free site on the Internet? The Motley Fool [fool.com], hands down.
Word.
TellMe (Score:2)
Re:What about search engines? (Score:2)
www.555-1212.com... (Score:2)
I noticed a few days ago that their services now require a registered account that only includes a limited number of lookups per month.
It's a shame since I used to use them exclusively for distant relatives phone numbers and the like.
I guess now i'll have to use Ameritech's or Yahoo's online directories.
*sigh*
Victim of the Economy (Score:5)
I am a former employee of a "dot-com", company which was closed by its parent company, so this is somewhat dear to me. And painful.
The company I worked for gave away its product for free to home users while pursuing "branding" (OEM) deals with other companies for increased eyeball count andhopefullysome revenue.
It didn't work.
While I will be the first to admit the banner emplacement in our product was poorly-implemented (one of the ways we intended to generate revenue), the sad truth of the matter is that the majority of people do not wish to pay for products or services, and if threatened with this, will move to another product or service. And as for deals with other companies, well, most of them were in the same situation.
The minority of the user base who are willing to pay for the product or service are usually not large enough to sustain the company. And OEM deals with companies with the same problem does not help, either. Instead, your own costs increase to support the new users you've just gained. And when money starts getting tight, one of the first things which gets cutor at least frozenis the support budget.
I've had plenty of time to ponder what went wrong (e.g., I still haven't found employment), and have come up with the following list of pitfalls we didn't avoid:
Do not lie to, mislead, or hide information from your customers. If you intend to turn a free product or service into a commercial one, let them know right up front that one day that might occur.
Your customers are your reality check. Not any sycophants you might be surrounded with, boards of directors, or venture capitalists. Listen to your customers. Within reason, do what they tell you. It could be that one suggestion, with a little polishing, might be just the thing to monetize your product or service.
As a corollary, I'm aghast at the number of companies which need to outsource market research/customer feedback activities. Why can't you ask your customers directly, or, for that matter, the folks who interact daily with them, the customer service reps, technical support engineers, account managers, and so forth? Are you afraid you are going to hear lies if you ask your customers or employees, and that the feedback you get is only valid if it is "massaged" though a third party? Blah.
Human beings are social animals, and need to interact with other people. No amount of videoconferencing, conference calls, email, or instant messaging is going to change that. And allowing employees to remain faceless and anonymous to each other is a great way to install fear and loathing in each other.
If you've outgrown your building and need to move activities into different offices that's fine; it means you're probably doing something right. However, don't put them in different cities, or, God-forbid, different states.
Before you start laughing like a hyena, keep in mind the same is true for developers. If your developers have to have new computers every few months, chances are you're going to be shipping products that are unusuable by most of your customers. If you give two groups of developers identical specs, and one group has the latest Pentium III/IV/whatever systems with hundreds of megabytes of RAM, 21" monitors, and a network spewing Cerenkov radiation, and the other group has 486 and Pentium systems stuffed with a few 10's of megabytes of RAM, monitors that can actually be carried by one person, and a network that just might be as fast as sneaker-net, well, you're going to get two very different-looking products that do the same thing. Which do you think your customers would rather use? The software that forces them to do massive infrastructure upgrades, or the one that blasts along with the occasional sonic boom? I know which one I'd rather use.
So, in a nutshell, if you respect and listen to your customers and your employees, develop products that people are willing to pay for, and spend your money wisely, you'll probablyand there's a fairly big "if-factor" in there do okay.
Aryeh Goretsky
- - -
- - -
Re:Leechers DESERVE to be broke (Score:2)
Tonight I was reading a story on www.news.com about a larger e"site" called www.listen.com (why haven't I heard of any of these *Larger* sites before ?).. So I thought I would take a look at listen.com. Well, nothing really caught my attention, except that it seems like just any other e"business" site that I've been to before, ie. chokfull-o-links and small typeface lettering, a feeling of being overwhelmed and not really knowing where to go.
So anyways I click on "free" music link littered about somewhere in the page.. which takes me to another page, click on another link which will apparently give me "free" mp3 music,.. Well the third or fourth page is located at amazon.com.. Okay, so here is the link to the music, "CLICK"
"Access to the requested Liquid Audio media is restricted to certain countries."
Well thats fine and dandy after wading through four or five pages of recursive crap. So I go back to listen.com, click on "Free Carl Cox MP3" or whatever it is.. this is great, Carl Cox is the king of DJ's "Cant wait to get his latest mp3 !!" So after another couple of minutes chasing the carrot above my head I finally get a link to the music, in big bold letters "DOWNLOAD MP3" or some such shit (MP3 was highlighted in big bold blue letters)... So i download, here is what i get..
carlcox_phuture2000hybridremix.rmp
oh for christs sake! That is no more an mp3 is than a chihuahua is a doberman. I'd love to call my volkswagen a cadillac, sure both are cars, but for fucks sakeone is a rattling piece of shit on its last gasp of air, and the other is a well engineered automobile.
Frankly the experience was lousy, there is no value in listen.com, its misleading its users ontop of that, the lack of value I reiterate.
I hope listen.com goes bye-bye, it should, it deserves it, I hope its fate is approaching soon, bye bye bye bye bye bye.
Why should I plunk down an annual subscription of $40 or $50 to pay for a valueless site ? I want something in return just like an investor would expect some dividends from gambling on a stock, I'm looking for the same thing in a different form.
Napster? Sure I'd pay for it, You know I would.
BTW: Why is liquidaudio (wtf is it anyways) restricted from Canada ?
Fuck esites. Did I say I agree with you ? Actually I dont, Suck it.
Re:Victim of the Economy (Score:2)
Reemi
Re:Internet ads (Score:2)
Now, you'd think these things would be fairly easy to sell, at SOME price. They can easily measure audience size, your ad is on all by itself (no competing ads before or after), and it's unlikely people are leaving to get a snack for the brief 30 seconds. But Internet advertising got such a bad name ("banners are ineffective!") that no one-- not the brick and mortars, not the dot coms-- would buy these things. They had to give a bunch away for free, as "trial offers".
It seems to me a lot of the brick and mortars are losing out on huge bargains right now, when a few years from now they'll be paying high rates when everyone catches on.
Ah, well, maybe it's for the best. The last thing we need right now is MORE corporatization of the net. Maybe these clueless corp's will help extend the incubation period of micropayments, tip jars, and such, so that when they finally come around, a lot of sites will be able to tell them to fuck off.
What it's all about... (Score:5)
Sometimes it happens that their initial business plan fails because a smaller percentage of the public opted for the "pay" services than the company in question expected. It's certainly fair play to add new "pay" features, and it's even fair play for a company to turn some of its "free" services into "pay" services as long as appropriate notice is given.
I honestly don't expect my Bigfoot account to be around forever, nor my Hotmail account... They don't owe me anything in that regard, except for common courtesy. Problem is that we tend to get wrapped up into a sense of entitlement once we get habituated to something...
Of course, that's just MY opinion, and I'm often wrong. (Just as my ex-girlfriends...)
1-800-MY-YAHOO (Score:2)
Yahoo Finance, email, TellMe (Score:2)
Personally, I don't think things like free email are ever going to become non-free. Services like Hotmail may begin to limit usage (You have to log in every 60 days now for the account to stay active. Maybe it'll go to 30 days?)
One service that still exists, and I can't understand how it's survived, is TellMe. The 1-800-555-Tell service that's like an uber version of Yahoo's. It's been completely free for a while now, and as far as I know the only company that's been advertising on it is AT&T (probably to lower their phone bill costs). I actually use the service pretty often when I'm away from the computer (check up on New Jersey Devils scores and the weather), but for how much longer? How are they making any money?
Re:Hopefully this brings more quality (Score:2)
The key aspect of the web in tying together information has always been the use of links. But nobody will link to a subscription site - what's the point? The reader probably won't have access to the linked content. Search engines would also be dead, since there's no way they could be given access to search the subscribers' content (doing so would open massive security holes regarding faking a search engine, using multiple search requests to retrieve the entire content by assembling the return contexts, etc..) and without it they'd be restricted to searching the site's own summary keywords - and it'd take only a few sites abusing the keyword system ("sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex" anyone?) to make that useless. The "web" would become a set of radiating lines. Furthermore this would raise the possibility of midstream providers charging for relaying: international packets cost more people money than national ones, after all. The result of *that* would be that the web would be reduced back to the ye olde BBS days - every site seperate, different costs for accessing them, massive information redundancy because of the seperation, etc. etc. etc.
So what can be done? Well, firstly, the reason for the death of advertising can only be to the silliness by which it was performed. Measuring click-throughs was a silly idea, really, because consumers are simply not used to ads that require an active response. Furthermore, the only reason for clicking through an ad to an e-commerce site would be an impulse buy - and nobody impulse-buys over the internet because you have to wait for the goods to be delivered which negates the impulse. (Some of them had silly ideas too. Like putting the ad at the top of the page, so "the user doesn't have to scroll down". Unfortunately the only result of that is that the ad gets skipped with the browser chrome and UI stuff at the top of the window. Or putting all the ads on a centralised server. Lag caused by ads is a far greater nuisance than the ads themselves.)
So what can happen now? Well, there's a chance that the cost of bandwidth will fall: less demand (remember, "demand" in economics means desire *backed up by money*), same supply (do you see any T1's being ripped out?) = price falls. People have already suggested new advertising models, but companies will need to accept that people aren't going to madly click on ads for info. Everyone's used to ads that they keep in mind for later buying.
End of the Free Lunch (Score:2)
but in context the great period of the internet free lunch is going away. Banner Ads are likely to become the net equivalent of highway bill board signs for effectiveness, for example. We will have alot of services whose main purpose in life is to collect marketing data.
(I still think that we should all enter in the marketing data for our favorite politician when filling out online survey forms. This would probably help out vs spammers no end [insert smile here])
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
Paying for Services (Score:2)
One thing on yahoo has done is if you want to get email for them using POP3 you have to agree to recieve advertising from them.
Doh
The problem with paying is not that I'm cheap, it is because it is so difficult. You have to put your credit card number in. Your address, which I'm think they will sell. Make sure you don't agree to recieve spam because of confusion check boxes.
Would you like us not to send you daily deals!
Maybe Yahoo has an answer with paydirect [yahoo.com]
One thing these email services can do is charge a micropayment on sending email. Like every month yourfirst 5 emails are free but as you send more email the price goes up. But after 1000 it is 10 dollars per email. The great thing is this makes it difficult on spammers.
Re:You can send email for free (Score:2)
A (still) working example... (Score:2)
- How wide their bandwidth is
- How many users they can handle
- How many simultaneous mySQL/PHP apps they can run
So, if you don't think about a free service as a finality, you've got a chance to make money out of it (and in this case, with no banners, ads, etc.).--
Donations..... (Score:3)
One service that took this approach is Crosswinds.net [crosswinds.net] which hosts free email addresses (POP3/Webmail hybrid) and gives unlimited homepage-space (I only use the mail). They have an absolute no-SPAM policy which is why I stick to them even with the occasional outage.
Last year they started to have financial trouble due to the lost of revenue in ad-sales and they did a "plead" during christmas time. Needless to say, I was one of the first that contributed... If I had waited 2 weeks longer, I would have gotten a T-shirt, but what the heck.
Anyway, if they keep in bussiness, I'm pretty sure I will donate again around christmas next year.
So perhaps in your case donations are the way to go. I wish you good luck on with your website (I'll check it out when not at work).
What about search engines? (Score:2)
AV, for example, wants you to spend TWO HUNDRED dollars to get listed in their directory with LookSmart. And those bills don't guarantee anything other than that your site will be "reviewed" to see whether or not it "qualifies" for inclusion. You can still submit to AV for free, but only after jumping through hoops. They generate a random GIF and you have to type in the characters contained inside, before you can submit... And even then, your "code" is only good for 5 URLs. If you want to submit more, you have to generate a new GIF and type in the new code. They're doing their best to make free submission a huge pain in the ass, especially if you have a lot of URLs.
I wouldn't be surprised (though I'd be rather disappointed) if the day comes when you can't submit to any search engine without paying a fee.
Shaun
MailStart (Score:3)
>or leaning suspiciously of late?
MailStart (www.mailstart.com) used to be the most useful site around. It would let you check any POP3 account, read your mail, reply to the messages, etc. through their web interface. The ads on their site were, surprisingly, quite non-intrusive. They recently closed down their free services.
On the brighter side, it only took me about 5 minutes to install a PHP script that does the same thing. Sure we're used to getting a lot of things for free, but if those places go under or start charging fees, quite a few of those services can be replaced with "do it yourself" projects.
I miss MailStart, though.
Shaun
Free services not run by large corporations? (Score:3)
I run a free community hosting service [avidgamers.com]. I've developed the system myself, and I pay for the increasingly pricey server myself. The site is and will probably stay free of ad banners, but I would like to keep the service free of charge anyway.
What am I to do? I can't say I feel like I have much in common with large corporations like Yahoo and Bigfoot, but I'm having the same problem as they are. Does anyone have any ideas that might help me avoid taking their path and charge monthly fees for my service?
(This would have been an Ask Slashdot, but that section is in my humble opinion turning into a farce [slashdot.org]..)
Internet Radio? (Score:2)
Re:Net ads vs. traditional (Score:3)
Net ads vs. traditional (Score:5)
Myrealbox (Score:3)
You can use Imap and use a program on your own computer, or Check it through Http.
It has no ads whatsoever, and is being ran as a free service by the people who own Netware, and the only problem is its down about once a month because they keep their servers upgraded with the Beta Stuff to test it out.
So, this is a free service that will most likely stay free, because it benefits the company.
Its about the money. (Score:2)
The linux community likes things to be 'free', as in beer and in speech. However, the free beer model doesn't work as well for hardware and services as it does for software. If an individual wants to make a contribution to 'free' software, where free refers to the cost (regardless of which license they prefer), then there is no cost involved for the user. They are volunteering their time - which does not require a cash outlay.
For free services on the net, which are typically provided by businesses, someone must pay for servers, bandwidth and people to keep the whole thing up and running. Depending upon the number of users of the service, this can become exceeding expensive. Businesses aren't charities, so in the end, they need the ability to generate money from the free services. The revenue can come from banner ads, subscription fees, or perhaps the service provides awareness of their other products which will lead to increased sales. However, in the end, there must be a financial justification for providing the service.
Consider
I see a lot of post here complaining about the evils of banner ads. Should I ignore the 'Think Geek' banner that is flashing incesantly at the top of my screen right now? Or, should I go check out their products and perhaps buy something of interest so they will continue to provide financial support for
In the end, someone must pay the bills, and that requires cash, and if there is no cash generation, then the service will end. While services may end, the open source revolution will remain, because the cost of participation is time, not money.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Inevitable and understandable! (Score:2)
I am the founder of a completely free technical support community [protonic.com] - but it has no big business behind the site. The internet is great, because it allows 'community freebies' to be globally accessible [such as protonic.com], but it doesn't change the basic premise which investors want - a service that generates those greenbacks - and lots of them!
However, many internet startups have, and always will, provide time-limited free services in order to generate interest in the community...and some may even be able to sustain them by other means. You should always be able to find some enterprising company giving away a perfectly good quality service for free; but you need to expect to have to eventually either pay, or move on!
My (still extremely overvalued) 0.0042 euros.
- Emile
protonic.com [protonic.com] : why not become a volunteer tech?
I'll breathe a sigh of relief when... (Score:2)
Re:Investors DESERVE to be broke (Score:2)
How Long? (Score:2)
Re:Victim of the Economy (Score:2)
In 1995 I proved to my manager that by buying each of his 5 developers a P90 instead of the 486DX75s we had, we would save the equivalent of one full time programmer. He said no. Don't ever confuse head count with capital budget. Finance people hate that.
Did we ship late? Sometimes. Do I ship stuff late now with my aging PII-366 laptop? Sometimes. So I ship it any later than the guy at the next desk with the 900MHz PIII? No.
--
How Long Can The Free Services Stay Free? (Score:3)
"Free software" is theft, for God's sake! (Score:5)
wanted to try it out. But I live in a small town and our only computer
shop sells only Microsoft Windows and a few games. In order to find
out where I could buy RedHat Linux, I talked to some of the "hacker"
type of guys at my job, who knew more about it. I was infuriated when
I found out that it was possible to download and even install RedHat
Linux from the Internet for free, through illegal so called "FTP
mirror" servers! They even told me that this was the "normal" way of
installing RedHat Linux. Even though it is illegal to download
software from the Internet like this!
Personally, I think this kind of behavior is abhorrent! You people
just don't understand that theft is theft, even though you are only
stealing "bits of information". The people behind Linux deserves to be
paid for their hard work! How would you feel if somebody stole your
computer? That wouldn't be too fun, would it?
Why do you think Bill Gates of Microsoft (the creator of MS-DOS and
Windows) has become a wealthy man, when Linus Torvalds of RedHat (the
creator of Linux) hasn't? That's because people have been paying Mr
Gates for his software, while other people are illegally downloading
Mr Torvalds' RedHat Linux for free!
From what I've heard, there are even web sites that specializes in
providing stolen Linux software (i.e., programs that can be run under
the Linux operating system). At those sites, you can choose what
kind of software you want to download (games, word processors, etc.),
and you are provided with lists of stolen software that you can
download, for free!
Even though there must be millions of dollars lost because of this
murky business, this hasn't been brought into the general public's
attention. My guess is that this is due to the fact that everyone has
been talking about the Napter MP3 web site. But I hope that this "free
software" business will be the next in line to be shut down!