Scoble debates on whether services such as Twitter should charge their “super-users”. An interesting thought, and it’s not so different to the underlying idea behind Freemium services.
Charging “super-users” might be viable in some situations, but I wonder if the same is true of “super-advocates” on networks. You could argue that Twitter extracts huge value from the super-advocacy of folk like Scoble. Why would they want to charge him? Surely they should reward him with a set of power tools for the service…
The debate moves onto architecture but I don’t seriously think that you could make a viable consumer proposition around the idea of: we have a busted architecture, so we’ll have to charge you for our services. (Sounds like the kind of software I’d make…)
When I think about Freemium services, they make sense when I use one (say, Flickr). $30 per year, no sweat. But when I add a few more: web-hosting, anything from 37signals, maybe even MobileMe :) then actually the cost suddenly begins to become an issue – even if it remains relatively small.
This is maybe not an issue for me personally being the hyper-connected soul that I am, but may create an overall barrier to growth for the Freemium economy in terms of mass-market penetration.
On the other hand, as the ‘alpha-geek’ of my family network a reasonable business model might be to charge me but allow me to provide the same privileges to my family (x users), playing to my super-user capability and also my (super-)advocacy in telling my networks about the service. I assert that this will matter over time as the various social-network models attempt to hold onto your data.
A simple example: since Evan was born, my entire family now use Flickr to keep up to date with her growth– some have even signed up for the Freemium service. Small fry additions to the user base of course, but not in the context of the overall set of super-users.
(I hesitate to say I’m the ‘alpha-geek’ of my social network as of course most of my friends are techies – which reminds me of a line: “Statistically speaking, half of your friends are below average”. But I digress…)
I guess the point is that while there’s money in all those advertising plays, we’re in the early days of business models that will be successful quickly, and those that will be successful over time.
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