I thought that the "give everything away for free and hope profit magically appears" online business model was long dead, a victim of the last tech bubble bursting. In any case, the solution here is pretty simple, start charging for content like almost everyone else has eventually had to once a solid customer base has been established. Start with "premium members only" content for a small extra fee, then gradually make it impossible for anyone to get anything significant from the service without coughing up the dough. That will ease the difficult transition from free to pay without ruffling more feathers than necessary. True, Skype will lose a percentage of its customer base, but does it really want to keep those who are never going to pay? On a side note, anyone think this announcement has anything to do with a certain Skype CEO stepping down...
An even bigger concern than our voting choices becoming public is the vulnerability of the personal data used to identify us in that voting process becoming 'hackable'. It's also worrisome that such data would be gathered by a company that
won-out in the government contract bidding process, a process which looks pretty scary to those outside the DC insider/lobbyist beltway.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought that the "give everything away for free and hope profit magically appears" online business model was long dead, a victim of the last tech bubble bursting. In any case, the solution here is pretty simple, start charging for content like almost everyone else has eventually had to once a solid customer base has been established. Start with "premium members only" content for a small extra fee, then gradually make it impossible for anyone to get anything significant from the service without coughing up the dough. That will ease the difficult transition from free to pay without ruffling more feathers than necessary. True, Skype will lose a percentage of its customer base, but does it really want to keep those who are never going to pay? On a side note, anyone think this announcement has anything to do with a certain Skype CEO stepping down...
An even bigger concern than our voting choices becoming public is the vulnerability of the personal data used to identify us in that voting process becoming 'hackable'. It's also worrisome that such data would be gathered by a company that won-out in the government contract bidding process, a process which looks pretty scary to those outside the DC insider/lobbyist beltway.