On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:22:00 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> "The service will be free, but we're hoping it will drive paid
> subscriptions."
> 
> Uh, yeah, IN WHICH UNIVERSE? Seriously, that's like saying "we're going
> to stand on street corners and give away free Milkybars(tm). We're
> hoping that if we do this, more people will go out and find places to
> buy Milkybars(tm)." WTF? That is so /obviously/ never going to work. OK,
> a tiny few people might not have tasted it before and might really like
> it. But the rest of us are just going to buy exactly the same number of
> Milkybars as before.

Obviously, you can't give something away for free forever and expect 
people to pay for the same thing.

But that's not typically how it works.  There are two variants to this 
that actually do work:

1.  Offer it for free for a limited time, then charge for the service.

2.  Offer a free service and a tiered pay-for service.

Jim

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