LJdramaqueens: O NOES YOU SEEKRITLEE TOOK AWAY BASIC ACCTS HOW DARE YOU ATTEMPT TO MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR SERVICE!
Much wanking ensues.
I dunno, ever since slightly prior to strikethrough, I just don't care anymore. Free user communities and their entitlement attitudes bug me so much these days. Remind me to never attempt to convert a free model to a business model, there's just no way to win once you've gone too far down the road. Manipulating lock-in hits a BIG EMOTIONAL TRIGGER that can destroy your fragile user goodwill like cortisol can destroy your immune system. The only way to get money out of a free model that's not more work than it's worth is value-adds, and not the sort that you manufacture by reducing basic features. In order for THAT to work, you need to have set up your free service in a scalable manner such that when your volume jumps, you can still give away whatever you were giving away without landing in the hole.
I have a lot of problems with some of the new big-hype concepts like the "->Free" content model and the "Thousand True Fans" model. I wouldn't offer a penny of funding to anyone that came to me pitching such plans, that's for sure. I hope this conceptual trend passes swiftly and leaves few offspring.
