Google Apps – no more free sign-ups, no more Freemium

December 8, 2012 By

Six years ago, Google Apps launched with a great suite of tools which could be used for collaboration and work for free by anyone with less than 10 users. A year later, the paid premium versions became available, and now that’s all that will be available, as Google has now stopped new sign-ups to the free option.

Apparently due to the difficulty of managing the experience for individuals and businesses, the options now are for individuals to use a free personal account, which still gives you access to the likes of Gmail, Google Drive etc, while businesses need to pay $50 per user per year. Existing customers, including those on the free version, will continue as before.

 

The implications of ending free Google Apps:

I’ve used Google Apps since launch, and maintain a number of different Apps accounts. From a business perspective, we’ve been inching closer to the user threshold to pay anyway, so it was always on my radar, and I have no problem investing in the right tools. No business can rely solely on free tools and services and be able to guarantee reliability, which is why we mix and match to ensure we use the best paid and free options together to do the best job.

Free Parking

But I’ve also recommended Google Apps to a lot of people over the years, and that’s going to have to stop with the loss of the free version, as it rules out a number of use cases.

Easy email addresses: If you own a domain and wanted to have the corresponding email addresses with a very easy set-up, Google Apps was perfect for that. Simpler than editing MX records, and it meant you could quickly use Gmail or other email services without any hassle. But it’s not worthwhile for $50.

Micro businesses: When TheWayoftheWeb started it was just me, and more people have been added rapidly to the team over the last couple of years. As we respond to increased demand, the revenue has covered the need for more admin and collaboration tools, but at the same time, I’ve been experimenting with other projects, like niche publishing, where adding the costs for 4-5 users would wipe out the profits from some sites entirely. The benefits of easy collaboration just aren’t there.

Businesses in developing economies: A cost of $50 per person is relatively low for most people in developed economies. It’s much harder if your income and profits are much lower. In countries where $50 is a substantial proportion of a monthly or annual wage, they’re now effectively stopped from signing up to what is a decent and fairly reliable set of tools.

New experimentation: I love experimenting with new projects and ideas. And while that isn’t going to stop, the free Google Apps option meant that I could quickly set up a workspace for a small team, run an idea for a while, and see whether it’s viable or not. Now new projects will either need to use alternatives, rely on more labour intensive methods, or be reduced to those which realistically cover their costs in a short space of time.

 

Sad times for Freemium:

The ‘freemium’ model has had some successes and some detractors, since it started to become popular. Offering free access with a further paid version was never guaranteed to deliver the returns for a business, but many people jumped on the bandwagon.

But with a company as big as Google, which apparently made $1 billion from the sale of Google Apps and mapping software to businesses and governments over the past year, dropping the freemium approach for Apps, it sends a pretty big signal to over people using that model.

And personally I think that’s a bad move. I agree with the idea that ‘if you’re not paying for a product, then you are the product’, but I also believe that many products need time and engagement to prove their true value, and the freemium model allows that to happen. I can’t remember how long I used the free versions of Spotify or Flickr for, but it was months and years before I then took the decision to pay for both services, and I’ve remained a customer ever since.

Encouraging people into online collaboration takes time and effort, and having free tools available means you can focus on engaging colleagues without any panic that you need to cover costs immediately. There are several great project management tools, for example, which offer a 30 or 60 day trial – but I’ve often found those trials are too short to get new projects up and running effectively and show any value before the payments kick in and the idea gets ended all too soon.

Pay Here

Apparently with more than 5 million businesses on Google Apps, the majority have less than 10 users and are on the free version, so this is the cost Google seeks to remove. But given the 6 year maximum growth available to Google Apps users, I’d question how many businesses have had the time to actually scale from a handful of users to a major business in that time, given the failure rate amongst small businesses around the world.

 

Damaging to Google’s brand?

I understand the logical business rationale for concentrating on paying users rather than free. It’s a balance I have personal experience of with clients just as Jigoshop, and it can lead to a lot of complex decisions and debates.

But Google seems to be making a lot of decisions which detract from their supposed stance to ‘Do No Evil’ and ‘Organise the world’s information’. Moves like putting all their effort into Google+ at the expense of other services such as Google Reader, dropping Feedburner advertising and setting it up for likely closure, and dropping free tools for collaboration show a company which is far closer to competitors like Apple and Microsoft now than ever before, particularly as Microsoft in particular has moved towards better and cheaper online tools.

In terms of belief, it’s harder than ever to know what Google really stands for, and what they’ll do next. That makes it harder to identify with them as a personal user/consumer, and much harder to include them in business decisions.

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Twitter advertising will go official soon

March 1, 2010 By

Twitter advertising is already in existence thanks to third parties including Magpie and Ad.ly, but details of the official Twitter ad platform have emerged in an article by All Things D’s Peter Kafka.

image

Image by Stefan on Flickr, used under CC Licence.

The plans are apparently evolving and there are plenty of details to be worked out, suggesting that the launch date will be likely in the first half of 2010, rather than in a month as previous articles have predicted. It’s also likely to be designated a ‘test’ rather than the total solution to monetising Twitter.

The platform is very similar to a Google model:

  • Adverts will show up in related Twitter searches.
  • Adverts will use 140 characters and will be distributed via third-party applications, which can choose whether to display advertising and share in the revenue.
  • Twitter will work with ad agencies and buyers to seed the platform, but will move to a self-serve model.

It’s interesting that Twitter has waited so long to implement an advertising model which has been made so ubiquitous by Google – presumably they were waiting for a critical mass of users and search volume before the conversion percentage was likely to be worthwhile.

Conversion rates will be of immense interest, as the usage of Twitter search is likely to show big differences to a Google search – a higher proportion of Twitter searchers are likely to be solely interested in other users and conversation, and will be less likely to covert to purchasing around a search term.

It’s a good step in terms of avoiding advertising in general Twitter usage, and the fact third-party applications can share in revenue or turn down Twitter advertising is a good move, and could help third parties implement a freemium model to monetise themselves.

The 140 limit makes sense – but I suspect it will be challenged by advertisers who suddenly realise exactly how hard it can be to include enough information into 140 characters – remember how adverts tend to carry a brand name, strap-line, and a call to action?

The one thing it doesn’t do is allow Twitter users to monetise their own content – which is the route of third party ad platforms such as Ad.ly and Magpie. They work on the influencer strategy, meaning that I can display their advertising to my followers in exchange for money, and as far as I’m aware, Twitter doesn’t take any share of the proceeds.

I can’t wait to see the first case study from a brand which invests in both approaches at the same time – it could go some way to quantifying the difference between a search advertising route and a influential recommendation route with the same message on the same network.

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Why newspapers will need 1000 true fans…

September 21, 2009 By

Newspapers will need to focus on their ‘1000 true fans’ when they switch on paywalls, judging by a survey released today by Paid Content UK and Harris.

The survey has appeared in response to plans by Rupert Murdoch and others to start putting news content behind a paywall, and reveals that if their favourite news site started charging, 3/4 of people claim they’d find another free site – only 5% would pay to continue reading.

And ironically, it’s younger readers who are more likely to cough up some cash than the older users – the 35-44-year-olds are the ones most likely to go elsewhere- although the middle class readers are most likely to pay.

Now that doesn’t have to be bad news for newspapers, if they can provide something that is worth subscription payments which make up for the lost readership.

The problem, as identified by Matt Thompson at Nieman Reports, and covered by Karthika Muthukumaraswamy at Online Journalism Blog (OJB), is that the majority of online news lacks in depth and detail what it gains in ‘24/7 access, real-time updates, increased transparency, and multiperspectival discussions’

In fact ‘The home page of almost every popular news site looks like a commercial for news stories other than the one you’re reading’.

The problem isn’t the internet itself, which is what the OJB article ends with – Thompson uses the example of Wikipedia to form great long form articles and stories, whilst Muthukumaraswamy picks out the New York Times, CNN, the BBC and The Guardian as examples of news orgs producing great standalone features.

The problem is one of perception by news teams.

The online format has always been taught as following the ‘hard news’ example – get the story across as quickly and in as few words as possible. People don’t have the time or patience to read more online, so hit them with hundreds of brief news items and they’ll flit about like a moth in a well-lit kitchen. The same thing we’ve seen advised for blogs, online video, and has been supported by the rise of microblogging.

But that’s wrong – as you can see by the success of full-length novels on mobile phones in Japan, for example.

Many, many people are now accessing the web by an ever-increasing number of devices, and as the digital familiarity has increased, we’re looking for increasingly different things.

Meanwhile newspapers heading behind the paywall will have to flip their editorial approach as quickly as they flip their business model. They’ll need to provide depth, detail and context to justify payment, using editorial teams which have been cut back more and more to try and survive on display advertising. And I haven’t seen a huge number of Murdoch titles hiring staff, for example. In fact, it appears to be AOL that’s hiring! (1500 writers is a clear indication of intent).

The paywall model will be doomed for exactly the same reason that most display-ad model newspaper sites were doomed – a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of online journalism. Almost 10 years ago I saw a competitor site switch to a paywall model and heard many people ask how they could survive – and at the same time those people were imagining a world in which the print news team would seamlessly move across to an all-conquering website.

Meanwhile hundreds of blogs and websites were springing up on a daily basis by starting small and experimenting their way into growth and editorial staff – the exact opposite of businesses which closed small-scale publications and dismissed any launches which didn’t look likely to drive an immediate huge audience with a corresponding need for staff and resources.

A handful of news organisations will make it through the next few years, whether by spreading themselves far and wide, or by engaging totally with their 1000 true fans to the degree that they can secure repeated subscriptions. Any that don’t commit fully to one of these directions, and achieve it to their maximum potential, are going to fail to crawl out of the swamp and evolve digital legs.

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Some interesting thoughts on Twitter and Friendfeed

December 7, 2008 By

Before you get back to work on Monday (or for some reading before you get down to working), there have been a few interesting and thought-provoking posts I’ve spotted:

Robert Scoble posted 10 reasons why Twitter direct messages suck, which I expected to disagree with, but he made a lot of sense in explaining why the amount of messages he receives means that he realistically has to ignore them – he can’t autorespond, file, filter, or mass delete, so it becomes unworkable.

Stowe Boyd then takes it and runs further, to outline how the problem could result in an opportunity to earn some revenue for Twitter, around improving the integration and functionality of direct messaging for those willing to pay $5 a month.

My thought is that it’s a very small group who need these features as an absolute necessity, but a larger number might be persuaded they need them. It’s certainly something I could see Twitter exploring, and I suspect that by offering it as a Freemium service, they could avoid some of the ‘sell-out’ accusations that display advertising will generate.

I’m not sure it’s enough to please the VCs and justify the valuation of Twitter – but I’m increasingly convinced that there isn’t a sole revenue stream that provides a complete solution – and it could be a mixture which becomes the answer.

The other thought piece I thought was worth repeating was Dave Winer on The Space Between Twitter and FriendFeed. Is there room for something that exists with a more graphic and visual system than Twitter, but without some of the complexity of Friendfeed which can put users off?

Obviously this wasn’t Pownce. But could it be a direction for Plurk, which already has a far more visual interface? Or one of the services I have to admit to overlooking a little in the influx of clones, copies and variations, such as Rejaw? And would it be enough to achieve the most important and challenging part of taking on Twitter – getting critical mass? Friendfeed is different enough to fulfill a slightly different function and have an identity away from microblogging, but would something in the Friendfeed/Twitter chasm be cursed by being too much of one or the other?

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Are we still debating whether music can be free?

November 18, 2008 By

I just read the piece by Mark Mulligan (of Jupiter Research), reposted on PaidContent, on Why Music Can’t ‘Just Be Free’, and I have to say I disagree almost entirely (As you can see in my comment on the bottom of the PaidContent article).

As I realised in writing that comment, ‘Copyright is a byproduct of the business model put on content creation – not the reason that content was created’. Mark points to the introduction of copyright for music at 150 years ago, but music, and music-derived revenues, existed for far longer pre-copyright than after it.

And this is in no way suggesting that content creators of any kind should not be able to be rewarded for their work. I’ve spent almost a decade writing for a living, so I’m very appreciative of the money it created – but I’m also aware that it’s a priviledge, rather than a creative right, and that it’s necessary to find the most appropriate ways to derive value from content creation within the current environment.

The issue of revenue is probably the hardest, but there are more and more examples of revenue from freemium options, live gigs, merchandise etc coming all the time.

The easier point to remove is the idea that if content is free, we’ll be inundated with rubbish and won’t be able to filter out the good stuff. If that were true, there would be no head to The Long Tail, no A-list of bloggers, and I’d be making as much money as Techcrunch.

And that content creation is not driven by revenue – Wikipedia is just the biggest example.

On the plus side, paidcontent also had some interesting quotes from a Billboard interview with EMI which shows a lot of more promising developments.

  1. EMI was the first major to try dropping DRM.
  2. Focus not on sales
  3. Regaining innovation
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