2008FEB131049
Openomy: self-funding/bootstrapping?
"... Openomy is completely free for now. In the future there will be an additional premium membership, in exchange for some nice extras. ..."
Is there any reason why you are not charging something? Sure you need free accounts to let people try the service. What about a Pro-Version like flickr. [0]
A question I'd like to ask is:
Q What nice extras do you offer?
For me nice extras would be:
- tools specifically to post to twitter (simple twit poster) , archive the post, process meta data (who replied, when)
- tool(s) specifically to post images to flickr (simple flickr uploader), archive image, text, tags & who replied.
- rss feed back of flickr + twitter archive that I can customise (select twit + flickr images mixed, only twitter, only flickr, only flickr, only flickr images by tag etc)
- allow my friends to subscribe to my feed
Abstraction above current service
This is an abstraction above your current service. But is readily consumable. The real problem is being able to find what people want, then charge for it. Flickr built this kind of back-end then built the photo site on top of it. Is this what you need? A purpose built public site on top of you data service?
"... Over the past couple of years, as we predicted, the world is moving to an almost entirely web-based software model. We post our photos to Flickr, write our documents on Zoho, etc. Unfortunately, it's much too difficult for us to use our photos posted on Flickr within our documents on Zoho. ..."
My view is you are doing a great job of creating the basic building blocks to achieve this. What I'd want to see is a pay for use service that allows you to demonstrate these aims. [2]
Turning commodity service into something users want
Your service utilises commodity bandwidth and storage. If you look at how flickr utilised these same commodities by harnessing the explosive use of cameras I'm sure you can see a way to make money from it. How flickr balanced the back-end development (infrastructure) with the front-end (consumer facing) is a case study in itself. This means more development, but that's what it's about right?
Reference
[0] The free version of flickr allows limited usage. It does not stop you upload images, but the cost for use is worth it if you intend to use it over a longer period.
[1] Caterina Fake, ITConversations, "The History of Flickr", www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1755.html
[2] One area I don't see is how you can share your data with friends, like friendfeed does so well.
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2008FEB131049
Openomy: self-funding/bootstrapping?
"... Openomy is completely free for now. In the future there will be an additional premium membership, in exchange for some nice extras. ..."
Is there any reason why you are not charging something? Sure you need free accounts to let people try the service. What about a Pro-Version like flickr. [0]
A question I'd like to ask is:
Q What nice extras do you offer?
For me nice extras would be:
- tools specifically to post to twitter (simple twit poster) , archive the post, process meta data (who replied, when)
- tool(s) specifically to post images to flickr (simple flickr uploader), archive image, text, tags & who replied.
- rss feed back of flickr + twitter archive that I can customise (select twit + flickr images mixed, only twitter, only flickr, only flickr, only flickr images by tag etc)
- allow my friends to subscribe to my feed
Abstraction above current service
This is an abstraction above your current service. But is readily consumable. The real problem is being able to find what people want, then charge for it. Flickr built this kind of back-end then built the photo site on top of it. Is this what you need? A purpose built public site on top of you data service?
"... Over the past couple of years, as we predicted, the world is moving to an almost entirely web-based software model. We post our photos to Flickr, write our documents on Zoho, etc. Unfortunately, it's much too difficult for us to use our photos posted on Flickr within our documents on Zoho. ..."
My view is you are doing a great job of creating the basic building blocks to achieve this. What I'd want to see is a pay for use service that allows you to demonstrate these aims. [2]
Turning commodity service into something users want
Your service utilises commodity bandwidth and storage. If you look at how flickr utilised these same commodities by harnessing the explosive use of cameras I'm sure you can see a way to make money from it. How flickr balanced the back-end development (infrastructure) with the front-end (consumer facing) is a case study in itself. This means more development, but that's what it's about right?
Reference
[0] The free version of flickr allows limited usage. It does not stop you upload images, but the cost for use is worth it if you intend to use it over a longer period.
[1] Caterina Fake, ITConversations, "The History of Flickr", www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1755.html
[2] One area I don't see is how you can share your data with friends, like friendfeed does so well.
next >>>