[rgrieselhuber]

It's amazing to see how quickly the transformation from free only to paid membership is taking place. In this economy, with the chances of buyouts being close to nil at the moment (let alone IPOs), it just makes sense. And for very small startups, founders should ask themselves why they would dedicate so much energy to something they can't expect to get paid for until they've built up a huge audience.

Conversely, and this is especially true for small startups, if you can build something for which a thousand or two people are willing to pay $20-40 / month, then that's a pretty attractive income. This could easily help you ride out the economy and be around when potential acquirers have more budget to spend, if that's your goal.

One other nice thing about this trend is it pushes focus away from marketing to the new-app-crack-babies that love to try every new thing for 5 minutes. They will give you some nice early feedback but don't really represent your target market, either in terms of demographics or loyalty.