(June 2, 2012 at 3:27 pm)Cinjin Wrote: Please compare software to software, not software to the most popular website on the internet. In addition, comparing unknown software programmers to a world famous web-designer who had a huge block-buster movie written about him isn't a fair comparison either.
Facebook is not just a 'website', unless you wish to compare the trivialities of something like this to something like this and use the same term.
It is more akin to Software as a Service (SaaS) than 'website'. As such, we can compare the dynamic and programmatic nature of Facebook, from interface to Hadoop deep back end, to a massive piece of software. That is networked (we have plenty of examples of networking software, so it's not an unfair or rare comparison).
(June 2, 2012 at 3:27 pm)Cinjin Wrote: Apples to apples ... my comparison works. Media software compared to billion dollar websites are apples to oranges. Also, I never said that he shouldn't make some portion of it free.
In the end, Darwinian will do what must be done regardless, but telling someone to give their work away for free is something I will never EVER do.
You're wrong then and will never understand:
- Open source
- Things that make money off of open source
- et al
Giving away access, even temporarily, is what starts a crapload of niche apps and game studios from the ground up. You NEED users.
Not dollars.
Users. Monetization is an art and a science -- it requires precise timing (when the cost of acquiring new users is about to increase) and execution (you need to know what to monetize. Not everything can be).
And monetization can be applied to a media application, just like it is applied to all the hundreds of mobile apps and social apps. The pull for later monetization and relatively free (to get hooked onto using) access is so great that Apple has an increasingly growing and depended on App Store, Microsoft is eying that market and making strides for it, and Instagram made a killing for being first-to-market and first-to-scale-up-without-a-hitch.
It all lies in knowing what your users like for free as first metric.
Darwinian NEEDS to know what the free experiences HAS to be like before he can score in the PREMIUM market.
Slave to the Patriarchy no more
