We've pointed out in the past that if you're "buying" ebooks on devices like the Kindle or the iPad, it's important to remember that you're not really "buying" the books, and you don't really own them. We're seeing that once again with a story on Consumerist about a woman who was locked out of the ebooks on her Kindle for a month:
A month ago I bought a kindle and was really excited to use it on vacation. I bought a few books and when I was done, I bought another. Then they froze my account, so I called in and logged a case.
Within 48 hours I got a call back, saying it was an error on their side and they'd unfreeze it for me, but I'd just need to re-order the book. I thought no problem, thanks for the help. So I bought the book a second time and it automatically freezes me out again. I call in and log another case, but get no phone call back as promised from an account specialist.
This apparently has gone on for four weeks, involving approximately 20 phone calls and emails... and still no solution from Amazon. Anyone know of any case where the same thing happened with a physical book?Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
Friday, September 3, 2010
Twitter For iPhone Push Notifications Are Being Internally Tested; Rolling Out Soon
To many users, Twitter for iPhone (the artist formerly known as Tweetie) is perhaps the perfect Twitter client (though I'd argue that the new Twitter for iPad is right there with it). But the one thing it has been lacking and that users knock it for is the lack of Push Notifications. Well, good news. They're coming. Soon.
Twitter is currently internally testing the feature, we've confirmed. Interestingly enough, we learned of its�existence�when the latest version of the app went out yesterday (the universal binary that included Twitter for iPad). It appears that users who have iOS 4.1 installed (which just hit Gold Master for developers, but won't be official out until next week) get the option to enable Push Notifications for Twitter. They don't appear to be working yet, but the feature is definitely there.
Twitter is currently internally testing the feature, we've confirmed. Interestingly enough, we learned of its�existence�when the latest version of the app went out yesterday (the universal binary that included Twitter for iPad). It appears that users who have iOS 4.1 installed (which just hit Gold Master for developers, but won't be official out until next week) get the option to enable Push Notifications for Twitter. They don't appear to be working yet, but the feature is definitely there.
ProBlogger Track Details ? Blog World Expo
Blog World and New Media Expo is a fantastic event for bloggers held every October in Las Vegas.
This year there will be a full day of ProBlogger training in a ‘ProBlogger Track’ on the Thursday. Yesterday the full details of that track’s sessions were released on the BWE site.
The four sessions through the day are [...]This Post is from: ProBlogger Blog Tips.
ProBlogger Track Details – Blog World Expo
This year there will be a full day of ProBlogger training in a ‘ProBlogger Track’ on the Thursday. Yesterday the full details of that track’s sessions were released on the BWE site.
The four sessions through the day are [...]This Post is from: ProBlogger Blog Tips.
ProBlogger Track Details – Blog World Expo
When Will People Learn: Websites Are Not Liable For What People Write In The Comments
It still amazes me when lawsuits actually get filed against sites for things that people write in the comments. Section 230 case law is really well established on this, and you would think lawyers would know better. But, such lawsuits still get filed, and they get dismissed just as quickly. In this particular case, a TV news anchor who was arrested during a drug bust (though, later, not indicted) got upset about her (former) employer writing an article about her arrest, where some people wrote things she didn't like in the comments. So, she sued her former employer for "allowing unfiltered online comments which contained false information." Of course, allowing unfiltered comments is not, by itself, illegal, and the court made that clear:
Miles does not allege that the defendants wrote or revised the false comments. In fact, she alleges that the comments were not filtered by the defendants. Furthermore, she complains that the defendants merely allowed the comments, and there is no indication or allegation that the defendants encouraged defamatory comments on their website. As a result, the Court finds that the defendants are immune from liability for the allegedly defamatory third-party comments published on its website pursuant to the Communications Decency Act.
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Miles does not allege that the defendants wrote or revised the false comments. In fact, she alleges that the comments were not filtered by the defendants. Furthermore, she complains that the defendants merely allowed the comments, and there is no indication or allegation that the defendants encouraged defamatory comments on their website. As a result, the Court finds that the defendants are immune from liability for the allegedly defamatory third-party comments published on its website pursuant to the Communications Decency Act.
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Thursday, September 2, 2010
Oil Rig Explodes in the Gulf of Mexico (Again)
Miss the good old days of daily oil disaster news? Worry not, for another oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded this morning, leaving all 13 crew members in the water but - according to initial reports - all are alive and only one is injured. The rig is owned by Mariner Energy (somewhere a BP exec is breathing again) and is not currently producing, according to the Coast Guard. Updated. Details are sketchy right now, but rescuers are en route to the site about 80 miles south of the central Louisiana coast. We'll update as this one develops.
Update: Reuters is reporting that the Coast Guard has spotted a one-nautical-mile by 100-foot oil sheen in the water at the site of the rig explosion. The fire has been contained, but the flames have not yet been completely extinguished.
Update: USA Today now reports that the initial claim of an oil sheen by Mariner Energy cannot be confirmed by the Coast Guard, and that an aerial flyover by Mariner personnel could not locate the oil sheen reported earlier. In other good news, the fire aboard the oil platform has now been extinguished.
[NYT]
Update: Reuters is reporting that the Coast Guard has spotted a one-nautical-mile by 100-foot oil sheen in the water at the site of the rig explosion. The fire has been contained, but the flames have not yet been completely extinguished.
Update: USA Today now reports that the initial claim of an oil sheen by Mariner Energy cannot be confirmed by the Coast Guard, and that an aerial flyover by Mariner personnel could not locate the oil sheen reported earlier. In other good news, the fire aboard the oil platform has now been extinguished.
[NYT]
Software Startups Realizing That Cookie-Cutter Freemium Doesn't Always Work Well
A few weeks ago, we ran a webinar about "using free as a part of your business." One of the speakers was Phil Libin, from Evernote, who gave a very detailed presentation (you can view the whole thing here) about how Evernote has turned "freemium" into a success story. I found his points fascinating, in part because I've actually never been a huge fan of the "freemium" model for software -- where you get some basic features for free and then to use more, you have to pay. I don't talk about "freemium" very often, because I'm not convinced it's a strategy that works in most cases. It can obviously work in some specific cases, as Evernote has discovered, but it can be tricky to apply elsewhere.
There are a few reasons for this. First of all, the basic concept of "freemium," involves some rather arbitrary choices. You provide "x amount" of storage/users/projects/features/etc. for free, and you hope that people will pay for increased storage/users/projects/features/etc. But where do you make the cut off? That's quite tricky to figure out, because there's no fundamental reason for the cutoff points. When we talk about using free in a business model, we generally focus on freeing infinite goods and selling the scarce goods, but "freemium" offerings for web services don't tend to make any such distinction. The "free" versions are basically given away as marketing in the hopes that people will upgrade.
But in many cases, that doesn't work for a few key reasons: first, you now have incentives to make the "free" offering worse. That's never a good thing. In the effort to get people to sign up for the premium version, you have bad incentives. You don't want to make the free version "too good" as then people won't feel the need to upgrade. I find that to be a bad incentive structure in many cases. On top of that, there's a part of this that's a "give it away and pray," type strategy. Yes, you're offering more features, but figuring out that right mix of what's free and what's paid is really incredibly tricky, and you simply have to learn to accept, as Libin has done, that the vast majority of people using your app are just there for the free version. For Evernote, one of the keys to making it work is that the app itself becomes more and more useful, the more you use it. That leads to greater conversions over time. That's honestly rare for most apps which have a more or less steady-state usefulness.
The problem is that while the "free" version is supposed to act as "marketing" for the paid version, it's often wildly mis-targeted. Many people use the free version solely because it's free, and have no interest in signing up for the paid version at all. So that's not the right target market. If you're going to charge for something, you need to give people a real reason to buy, which often is offering something entirely different that is enhanced by something free, rather than limiting something free.
Unfortunately, however, the whole concept of "freemium" (including the catchy term) has received so much attention that many startups now jump right in with a cookie-cutter "freemium" offering -- and now they're learning why that's a mistake. Ross Pruden alerts us to a really interesting article from an entrepreneur who went the cookie-cutter freemium route, and eventually backed away from it and saw his revenue shoot upwards. He then explores a few other companies that have gone through similar evolutions, and saw the exact same thing happen.
This isn't surprising, given the problems described above about "freemium." Unfortunately, however, the author of that blog post, Ruben Gamez, jumps to the wrong conclusion that "free plans don't work." That's taking it a bit far. Freemium type plans can work in some cases, and "free" by itself can work wonders, if done right. But that tends to involve using free to enhance the value of something else, rather than using it as a sampling.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
There are a few reasons for this. First of all, the basic concept of "freemium," involves some rather arbitrary choices. You provide "x amount" of storage/users/projects/features/etc. for free, and you hope that people will pay for increased storage/users/projects/features/etc. But where do you make the cut off? That's quite tricky to figure out, because there's no fundamental reason for the cutoff points. When we talk about using free in a business model, we generally focus on freeing infinite goods and selling the scarce goods, but "freemium" offerings for web services don't tend to make any such distinction. The "free" versions are basically given away as marketing in the hopes that people will upgrade.
But in many cases, that doesn't work for a few key reasons: first, you now have incentives to make the "free" offering worse. That's never a good thing. In the effort to get people to sign up for the premium version, you have bad incentives. You don't want to make the free version "too good" as then people won't feel the need to upgrade. I find that to be a bad incentive structure in many cases. On top of that, there's a part of this that's a "give it away and pray," type strategy. Yes, you're offering more features, but figuring out that right mix of what's free and what's paid is really incredibly tricky, and you simply have to learn to accept, as Libin has done, that the vast majority of people using your app are just there for the free version. For Evernote, one of the keys to making it work is that the app itself becomes more and more useful, the more you use it. That leads to greater conversions over time. That's honestly rare for most apps which have a more or less steady-state usefulness.
The problem is that while the "free" version is supposed to act as "marketing" for the paid version, it's often wildly mis-targeted. Many people use the free version solely because it's free, and have no interest in signing up for the paid version at all. So that's not the right target market. If you're going to charge for something, you need to give people a real reason to buy, which often is offering something entirely different that is enhanced by something free, rather than limiting something free.
Unfortunately, however, the whole concept of "freemium" (including the catchy term) has received so much attention that many startups now jump right in with a cookie-cutter "freemium" offering -- and now they're learning why that's a mistake. Ross Pruden alerts us to a really interesting article from an entrepreneur who went the cookie-cutter freemium route, and eventually backed away from it and saw his revenue shoot upwards. He then explores a few other companies that have gone through similar evolutions, and saw the exact same thing happen.
This isn't surprising, given the problems described above about "freemium." Unfortunately, however, the author of that blog post, Ruben Gamez, jumps to the wrong conclusion that "free plans don't work." That's taking it a bit far. Freemium type plans can work in some cases, and "free" by itself can work wonders, if done right. But that tends to involve using free to enhance the value of something else, rather than using it as a sampling.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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