06 April, 2009
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FREEMIUM

Chris has a great response to The Economist on free models. I’ve long argued that free often gets misread as literally free. (the comments are worth reading)

Every customer comes with a cost. Rather than pay to market to you and obtain revenue now, instead I choose little or no marketing or distribution cost, focusing instead on the belief that you will pay for the product later. These freemium models are all round us. Google is doing it with Picasa. Flickr with FlickrPro.

There are those that also believe that, if you believe, you will pay. CC Cleaner is a great example. Terrific free utility for Windows. You pay to support the product if you think it is worth it. And its worth it. They are essentially monetizing a percent of their customer base that has a conscience or real enthusiasm for what they are doing.

Also worth a read is this survey of free business models online. More links here….

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Tags Business, Start-Ups, Web 2.0
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06 April, 2009
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ideas for healthcare

We launched an IdeaStorm for healthcare today… Chris gets what we are up to

In the “you’ve gotta take a look at this department,” check out Ideastorm for Healthcare from DELL. Their original Ideastorm project was about giving voice to a community to better improve Dell products and services. Ideastorm for Healthcare gives a specific community a place to come and talk about things from their perspective.

Take note of this idea. They’ve given voice to a segment of their community that matters to them. It’s obviously the sign of things to come, and not a bad way to show that you’re listening. It’s also great for your product marketing teams as well as better customer service.

It’s a win, provided your community rushes in to respond and do their part. Remember, it’s not exactly sexy for customers to talk about you and your product unless they come away with the feeling that they’re being equipped for further success. Meaning, people love when you listen by giving them exactly the product they want/need/crave.

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Tags Dell
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02 April, 2009
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P&G

Interesting conversation between Stowe and Joe Schueller of P&G. I like this comment: “Joe believes that P&G has grown intolerant of duplicative work, for example: He quotes the CEO of P&G who stated recently that the company has many, many networks of smart people, and the trick is to get them to find each other and dream up new ways to deliver great products.”

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Tags Required Reading
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01 April, 2009
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Cool Idea From Amazon

This idea from Amazon would be amazing for other consumer products… consumers essentially offer to demo our products to other consumers and let them experience it. If you did a mash-up with Dopplr it would get really interesting…

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Tags Required Reading
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01 April, 2009
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Missing From My BB

Looking at the new Blackberry App store it seems pretty impressive. Nice GUI, easy Nav, some good apps. For me the company behind the App store doesn’t get it though… Some things I wish my Blackberry with it’s new App Store had…

  1. Affordable apps. Surprised at how many are at $4.99
  2. Missing apps. On the phone. That should be free. Like an effective world-clock. Duh. You sell to business travelers.
  3. iTunes. Yes. iTunes. I’m tired of multiple music systems. Just give me iTunes.

What else is missing… ?

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