There are many “free” products out there.
Look at the Google Suite, for instance. I’m pretty sure they’re taking over the world. Email, word processing, spreadsheets, blogging, dev tools, voice chat, on and on the list goes. All. For. Free.
Kind of.
Advertising. That’s how Google makes their bucks. The more they know about you, the better they can place their ads, the more accurately the ads are placed, the higher chance you’re going to click, and the more people click, the better.
Crazy, huh?
And we all thought they were just a search engine company who was really nice with cool people who wanted us to use all these really nifty tools for free. Rainbows and candy. Yum.
I feel warm and fuzzy, how about you?
There are many other free services out there, too. Not just the Googler junk (which I totally dig).
Tweet Deck, Evernote, Skype … help me out here, folks, I know there’s more. You get the gist. There’s a decent crowd of solid apps that are free. Services like Skype and Evernote present premium features and upgrades, as do many smartphone and tablet apps. Some of us are completely satisfied with the free junk, but we’re hooked. Once we’re hooked, we’re more likely to upgrade or go for premium.
There seems to be a subtle divide. There are those free products that leech-off of our user information, so they can sell to us better, and those that work like drug dealers. Give us a little for free, we get hooked, and then want more. There’s a lot of strategy involved when launching a new product with all sorts of those variables to comb through.
Here is a great read for those who are looking at launching a product and trying to figure out if they should go “free.”
Graham says
Both approaches, leaches and the drug dealer, approach are good for different products. I took the bait and bought a 50gb dropbox account pretty quickly.
Eric Dye says
Good call!
You get 10 bonus points, Graham.
Graham says
Points I can use? Or “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” points?
😉
Eric Dye says
Points that I keep in my head … [awkward silence]
Graham says
Haha