[ulf]

Sometimes, when reading pieces like this, I think it is time that we as internet users reach a certain point in our understanding of entitlement. There are so many services we readily use, most free of charge, while some of them provide a huge service to us. Some even make us money. But if the service providers themselves try to validate their business by making money out of it in some way, we start bitching...

I do not especially condone what Scribd is doing here, nor can I say I would have anticipated that behaviour (harvesting interesting content and subsequently making the whole service pay-only is not the dumbest thing ever), but if you take a second when you first start using a service and try to think about the fact that they some day will have to make money, you should be able to get some conclusions. What options does the provider of the service have to make money at all? Which of these options would be ok for me? Which would piss me off badly? And how do I avoid being in a trap like the OP?

If one thinks about those questions instead of just feeling entitled to use a service, which might be "free" at the moment, the awakening should not be to abrupt.

[ajscherer]

I would flip that around on you: I think it is time that companies reach a point in their understanding of users' reaction to the bait & switch.

The value of your service to a user isn't going to increase simply due to the passage of time or growth of your site. If they wouldn't pay for it on day 1, the odds are they won't pay for it after 2 years of using the service. If, in the process of trying to monetize your service, you "hold hostage" a portion of the value that the user has contributed to your site, they are going to be pissed.

This has all happened many times now. I think companies trying this route in the first place will be easier to change than peoples' reaction to it.

[trustfundbaby]

> I think it is time that companies reach a point in their understanding of users' reaction to the bait & switch.

For real. This always reminds me of the dude who tries to be friends with the girl so he can eventually date her, instead of simply asking her out, and risking the 'No' like a man.

Slimy.

[matwood]

It's also the wrong way to go about because once you end up on the friends ladder it's almost impossible to cross the abyss. ;)

http://www.laddertheory.com/ladderconstruction.htm

[there]

I would flip that around on you: I think it is time that companies reach a point in their understanding of users' reaction to the bait & switch.

i agree.

The value of your service to a user isn't going to increase simply due to the passage of time or growth of your site.

i disagree. many users may not pay on the first day because they don't see the value in it, or don't understand how the site works. but being able to use it for free and coming to depend on it may put a higher value on it over time.

how many users would pay $1 per month to access facebook now that all of their friends are on it and they use it every day? probably a lot. those users probably wouldn't have signed up for an account in the first place if they had to enter a credit card number.

[evilduck]

Maybe. But on the other hand, they've provided me their service for free for several years now and putting it behind a pay-wall would effectively be holding my social network hostage.

Not only do I value Facebook's service at less than $1/mo, but I'd be highly resentful of the switch, especially if I percieved it as a money grab or network lock-in attempt, instead of a reflection of their increasing costs (which could still be problematic if I knew they were wasting lots of money).

[rick888]

"The value of your service to a user isn't going to increase simply due to the passage of time or growth of your site. "

Yes it will. If that user uses your service every day, over time, it will be more valuable to them. Most services also don't just stay the same over time. More features are added and bugs are fixed, which adds to the value.

"If they wouldn't pay for it on day 1, the odds are they won't pay for it after 2 years of using the service."

If you never gave them the option of paying in the first place, how do you know?

"I think companies trying this route in the first place will be easier to change than peoples' reaction to it."

The answer is to not have free services in the first place. Many companies have tried the freemium model and then realize that it can't scale (IE: the costs to support this free user base out weighs the benefits).

[miles]

any companies have tried the freemium model and then realize that it can't scale (IE: the costs to support this free user base out weighs the benefits).

It has scaled wonderfully for Evernote:

"From the start, Libin modeled Evernote to be profitable at a 1% conversion rate ... Right now, roughly 2% of all Evernoters are premium customers ... Libin wants to maintain that rate at 5% or less. If people start converting en masse, 'that means our free product isn't good enough,' he says."

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/147/next-tech-remember-t...

[rick888]

"It has scaled wonderfully for Evernote:"

This is the exception rather than the rule.

[ryanelkins]

I want to give Scribd the benefit of the doubt. I don't really see this as malicious as much as a business decisions that was misinterpreted.

It was probably something like this: People upload a lot of stuff to their service. Once content goes "stale" no one is viewing it anymore, but they are still storing it. They decided they could either remove the material to make room for new stuff or monetize the old material in a way that justified keeping it around.

The cost of storage is pretty low so maybe I'm reaching a bit here on their behalf. I have no idea what sort of scale they are at. Perhaps I just like to believe that people aren't trying to be evil.

[teaspoon]

That argument's not self-consistent, though. If people are still viewing the "stale" content, then what makes it stale? If people aren't viewing the content, then how can they recoup any costs by putting it behind a paywall?

[YuriNiyazov]

"The value of your service to a user isn't going to increase simply due to the passage of time or growth of your site."

I disagree, at least in one specific case. A new dating site doesn't have enough of a userbase of the gender that I am interested in for me to signup and pay a monthly fee. If they successfully complete their marketing play, I will gladly sign up.

[pdu]

While I generally agree with your points, I don't think they are particularly apt to this article. The guy isn't saying Scribd owes him anything, he even states that he understands they never promised him a free service in perpetuity.

But when you make a service available for free and take pride in that fact, harvest your users content, and then suddenly flip over to a paid service without even giving your users adequate notice or tools to opt out I can completely understand how users might feel cheated.

Isn't the company partly responsible for creating the sense of entitlement you're talking about?

[ulf]

I totally agree with you that it is understandable to feel cheated in this occasion. Changing the model without saying so clearly is just bad communication (see the posterous link fiasco). But nevertheless I feel that a company does not have to explicitly state the fact that they are somehow aspiring to make money with their product, that is a given. So as a user I cannot be too shocked when somecorp starts to make money.

[j_baker]

It's not that they're trying to make money. It's how they're trying to make money. At the start of the blog post, it sounds like the author was satisfied with scribd. I'd be willing to bet that he'd have been willing to pay them money had they approached him in the correct way.

[saurik]

The worst case outcome of this (which I think is useful to mention, but maybe it is obvious) is when another company manages to think through all of that and "succeeds": figuring out how to monetize their product in a way that actually seems like a fair value proposition to all parties if you think through this, but instead totally fails because there is some website offering the same service "for free". If users cared enough to think through the business models of the companies involved, they'd realize how doomed the second company's model is, where the best case scenario is that one day they log in and they've pulled a Scibd, and that they should probably not be willing to use a free service, but instead they just go with it, get angry when it either collapses or starts monetizing, and them glom on to whatever the next "for free" version is. :(