Ever-Growing Evernote Hits 10 Million Users (425,000 Paying Ones, Too) May 2009: Evernote hits 1 million registered users December 2009: Evernote hits 2 million registered users May 2010: Evernote hits 3 million registered users August 2010: Evernote hits 4 million registered users November 2010: Evernote hits 5 million registered users Today (6 June 2011): Evernote hits 10 million registered users As you can tell from the numbers copied above, that means Evernote attracted about 4 million users since the beginning of this year, but more importantly, the number of premium (paying) users has more than doubled in the past 5 months (from ~200,000 to ~425,000). The startup owes a lot of that growth to its cross-platformness: it offers native apps for Mac, Windows, Web, iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, HP WebOS — with support for more apparently on the way according to today’s company blog post. According to Evernote, 75 percent of its user base uses 2 or more platforms to access its service (some power users apparently use as many as 10).
Apple cult mocked by Samsung in Galaxy S II ad | Technically Incorrect "I could never get a Samsung," says a self-consciously cool-looking, whiny dude, seated on the sidewalk. "I'm creative." "You're a barista," says the man standing next to him in line. This is perhaps the most touching line in what is a very creditable attempt at mocking the Church of Science-ology that is Apple. The mockery is part of a new ad for the Samsung Galaxy S II, which is a phone of which many might not have heard. The people standing in line in various cities--outside places that look remarkably like Apple stores--are Apple's dedicated followers. This is, thankfully, not similar to the desperate, painful Super Bowl ad created by Motorola for its highly successful Xoom tablet. In that ad, Motorola's ad agency decided to portray Apple as Big Brother--and the Xoom as the second coming of Flower Power. Here, there is a semblance of humor, ergo truth. Sadly, though, the good is tempered a little with the tagline "The Next Big Thing Is Here."
I Won’t Use Flickr Until They Release My Photo Hostages Freemium business models are always hard. You have to give users enough for free that they try your service out and get hooked. Then you hit them with fees for upgraded features that make it even better. With a perfect product people don’t mind paying because they feel like it’s good value. Flickr is a freemium service. But they have more of a hostage taking business model. On the surface Flickr’s pro service, currently $25/year, seems fair. Reasonable? But I’m guessing the real reason most people upgrade isn’t to get unlimited uploading. My Pro account expired at some point, probably because I missed an email or my credit card number changed. Flickr won’t show me that photo. That is absolutely no way to treat a customer. And it doesn’t make sense for Flickr. Will I pay the Pro fee to get these photos back? That isn’t what Flickr should want to be. Flickr has sat on the sidelines as mobile photo apps have come into their own. Photo credit: Flickr/Matthias Weinberger
If Freemium Is In, Then Why Do Paid Apps Still Reign Supreme? Earlier today, we posted on some data from Pando Networks that shows that free-to-play online games, often overlooked in the hype around social and casual games, are growing just as fast and as furiously around the globe as their counterparts. Obviously, much of this has to do with the industry’s transition from paid to freemium models — the examples of which are numerous not only in online gaming, but for web and mobile apps on the whole — and even startups and SMBs making their way in the consumer Web. While many of us probably take the rise of freemium for granted by now, some new stats and a nifty infographic from Quixey show that we are still very much in a transitional phase. Of course, as you can see in Quixey’s infographic below, apps that cost $50 and above only comprise about 0.3 percent of mobile apps, whereas apps priced between $1 and $50 make up about 32.6 percent of the app population. Check it out below and let us know what you think.
Full API now available Full API now available The full Instapaper API is now available for developers. See the Full API documentation to get started. I’ve made an unusual decision for it that I’d like to explain. I was reluctant to make a full API before now for a few reasons: Instapaper has nontrivial operating costs. Services with venture-capital backing can keep their APIs free in order to get more users, delaying theoretical profitability to an unspecified future date. Initially, I came up with two options: I could limit the API so it couldn’t be used to make a full-featured Instapaper app. Those options aren’t very good. Full API access, but only for paid-subscriber accounts. All previous API functionality will remain free and will work for any account. Instapaper’s own paid and ad-supported free iPhone and iPad apps in the App Store will continue to work for all customers. The first app The first complete Full API app is Stacks for Instapaper, a Windows Phone 7 client. OAuth 2.0 Thank you
Instapaper Releases A Full API — With A Brilliant, Unique Twi$t I love Instapaper. Blah blah blah — you all know that by now. But today developer Marco Arment has released something significant that could alter the way the service is used: a full API. And perhaps even more interesting is how he’s released it. In his blog post on the matter, Arment dives into his tough decision making process when it comes to the API. The obvious choice would have been to either limit the API or charge for it. Instead, Arment came up with a smart third way of doing things. Arment also uses his post to introduce the first app using the full Instapaper API: Stacks for Instapaper. You can find Instapaper’s API documentation here.
In-App Purchases Will Dominate the Smartphone App Business - Media Market Research at iSuppli What’s the best way to make money in the smartphone apps market? Surprisingly, the answer is to give away apps for free—and to generate revenue on subsequent sales of in-app purchases. In-app purchases will rise to account for 64 percent of total market revenue in 2015, up from 39 percent in 2011, as shown in the figure below. Revenue from in-app purchases will increase to $5.6 billion in 2015, up from $970 million in 2011, according to the IHS Screen Digest Mobile Media Intelligence Service at information and analysis provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). “Smartphone users overwhelmingly prefer free apps to paid apps, as we estimate 96 percent of all smartphone apps were downloaded for free in 2011,” noted Jack Kent, senior analyst, mobile media for IHS. The business model of offering apps for free, then charging for in-app content, is known as “freemium.” Mobile Games Led the Market, Other App Categories Must Follow“Games pioneered the in-app business model,” Kent observed.
Case Studies in Freemium: Pandora, Dropbox, Evernote, Automattic Don’t spend money on marketing, do offer flexibility and data exporting to eliminate buyers’ regret, make sure to capitalize on and value goodwill, and only charge for things that are hard to do. That’s what some startups say is the key to success in the freemium business. But the biggest reason the five presenters this morning at the Freemium Summit in San Francisco — Pandora, Dropbox, Evernote, Automattic (see disclosure at the bottom) and MailChimp — are doing well is because they have great products that people want. They’ve been able to get those products to a broad audience by using the freemium model — that is, offering a free service with the option to upgrade. It’s an increasingly important business model, but one that’s hard to navigate, so their anecdotes, open sharing of data, and lessons learned were really valuable. Pandora CTO Tom Conrad That November, Pandora switched on an “ad-supported” option. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston Evernote CEO Phil Libin
Freemium is better than Free « Alexander van Elsas’s Weblog on n A few interesting posts drew my attention this morning. First there was Dave Winer who predicts that on-line advertisement will be dead. Not because it will completely disappear, or that it’s growth will slow down considerable. Erik Schonfeld at Techcrucnh shows statistics that advertisement growth is grinding to a halt. Chris Anderson explains about the metrics behind a business model I like a whole lot better, Freemium. Chris provides some market statistcs on this: But that was just a hypothetical percentage split, to make a point. If you can get 5% of your user converted to paying customers then your business case can become profitable. What I like best bout Freemium is that it combines the best of both worlds. Like this: Like Loading...
Fred Wilson is wrong about “Free” by Dalton Caldwell Fred Wilson is one the smartest, most genuine people in the tech business. He has a huge fan club that he has earned by being radically transparent and consistently engaging in public debate. I have emailed with him a few times over the years, and actually met him and shook his hand a few weeks ago. I think Fred Wilson is awesome, and if I saw him on the street today I would walk up and shake his hand again. With that being said, I am now going to make an argument that his blogpost, “In defense of Free”, which was apparently intended as a response to my blogpost, “An audacious proposal”, is wrong. The semantics So to start with, let’s talk about semantics. This word, platform, is a very important one. Platforms are great because they enable you to get all sorts of benefits from the work done by others. However this “platform” word starts to get very troubling when talking about business models. Fred Wilson makes some arguments about Pay TV. On “being a bitch” I tweeted: He also said: Kudos