Freeeconomics ... It changes everything

Recently ran into this article "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business"by Chris Anderson at Wired Magazine.

Now while on the surface I dont buy what this article is trying to say, cause someone always has to pay and there is no free meal. There is a growing perception these days on the web that onlines services should essentially be free and if there is a cost associated to a service your best bet to fame is by offerring a free version of that same service.

I think whats going on today on the web is a great deflection economy where the consumer of the service is being funded by the vendor based on the revenue it might be getting from another consumer or advertiser. So the consumer is left with the perception that what they are consuming is essentially "Free". Now wasnt that going on already with ad based community magazines that were available for free. I guess todays online service providers have taken that model and optimized it to their benefit.

Here's the Taxanomy of free that Chris has listed.

Freemium
What's free: Web software and services, some content. Free to whom: users of the basic version.
Advertising
What's free: content, services, software, and more. Free to whom: everyone.
Cross-subsidies
What's free: any product that entices you to pay for something else. Free
to whom: everyone willing to pay eventually, one way or another.
Zero marginal cost
What's free: things that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to
anyone. Free to whom: everyone.
Labor exchange
What's free: Web sites and services. Free to whom: all users, since the act
of using these sites and services actually creates something of value.
Gift economy
What's free: the whole enchilada, be it open source software or user-generated content. Free to whom: everyone.

Click "here for the complete article.

Platforms for building future CRM Apps or any Apps for that matter

Had a very interesting interaction last week with some bright folks at a .com company. Anyways felt like blogging after a long time cause had something really interesting to share based on some stuff I've been working on. Also have lazily ignored blogging over the last few weeks :-(

Anways to get on with it. Over the last few weeks I've been trying to play around with what might very well be platforms delivered through the cloud for building the next generation CRM Apps and maybe even "any" Apps in general. So here's the working list and as I go through them will have detailed posts on each as well.

As I go through the list, 3 strong trends that are emerging for me are;

- Delivery as a service
- Rich internet applications
- User focused application development

Here's the list I've been looking at and will post soon on each of these individually as well.

Force.com
Coghead
OpenLaszlo
Iceberg
ZohoCreator
Trackvia
WuFoo
LongJump
SugarCRM

Whether you're an individual, organization (large or small) or ISV looking for a new application or with existing applications, there is no way you can go decide to create or buy your own application today without looking at one of these platforms.