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).
Should Your Startup Go Freemium? Editor’s note: Jules Maltz is a general partner at IVP and focuses on later-stage venture investments in rapidly-growing Internet and software companies. Follow him on Twitter. Daniel Barney is a senior associate at IVP and focuses on later-stage venture investments in digital media and information technology. Over the last several months, there has been an intense debate about the viability of freemium business models. While we’re not Samurai sword fighters at IVP, we believe that freemium is massively disruptive and needs to be understood. 1) Start With The Product Over the course of our interviews, one point came up again and again: make sure your No. 1 priority is your product. Typical freemium companies convert between 1 percent and 10 percent of users into eventual paying customers. Furthermore, the simplicity and quality of your product must be consistent across both free and paid offerings. You can’t attract free users or paid customers unless you build a great product. 2. 2.
How the Crowd Is Shaping the Future of Storytelling Molly Barton is president of Book Country, an online community for genre fiction writers, and VP of Digital Publishing, Business Development and Strategy at Penguin Group (USA). Stories are the foundation of human communication, even when first relayed over campfires — an inherently social and communal setting. The storyteller can change his tale based on the expressions on the faces of his audience — speed up here, slow down there, give more background on a character. The storyteller may hear someone else retell his or her own story in a different way, and use that experience in telling new stories or iterating upon the original. In the modern world of broadcast and publisher media, the traditional model relies on a series of individuals reading and choosing which stories will appeal to broad audiences. The Power of Peers Having positive reviews and interest from readers pre-publication will help push the boundaries of what a curator in a big company will be willing to consider.
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."
The Freemium Business Model I wrote a post last weekend called My Favorite Business Model. I posted it earlier today. Here is how I described the business model: Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base. At the end of the post I asked for some suggestions of what I should call this business model. And at the risk of calling the game before it’s over, I have to go with Freemium. So from here on in, I will refer to this business model as the freemium business model.
Montagspredigt: Social Media und deutsche Markenarbeit – Zwei Welten prallen aufeinander Deutsche Markenarbeit – das ist traditionelle Kommunikation. Monolog. Monolog von der Kanzel herab. Von der Kanzel herab mit erhobenem Zeigefinger. Woher soll der deutsche Markenarbeiter es auch besser wissen? Deutsche Markenarbeit ist Spiegelbild deutscher Konzerne, deutscher Manager, deutscher Arroganz und Ignoranz. Bei der deutschen Markenarbeit geht es nicht um Kreativität, Innovation und Wandel. Nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Die Marke braucht Wandel, sie braucht Vielfalt, sie braucht Kommunikation, Kooperation und Kollaboration. Vor allem aber braucht sie Mut. Deutsche Markenarbeit braucht den Mut zum Risiko. Den Mut, die richtigen Dinge zu tun – und diese Dinge dann auch richtig zu tun. Die deutsche Markenarbeit muß erkennen, daß sie längst nicht mehr existent ist, in Agenturen, in Unternehmen, in Medien, in ihren eigenen Verbänden. Die deutsche Markenarbeit muß erkennen, daß Social Media nicht die Lösung für jedes Problem da draussen ist. 593 direkte Website-Leser 2012
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
Segmenting customer pipelines When building a freemium SaaS company or an ecommerce company or any product that requires users to move through a funnel towards an objective, it’s important to track this funnel to understand where the funnel can be improved. But tracking one funnel may not be enough. The aggregated funnel may be masking conversion differences across customers segments. For example, at Expensify conversion rates to paid vary quite a bit across customer size. But the total conversion-to-paid rate hides these nuances. It’s critical to understand each segment well. This understanding is ultimately critical to the success of the product and marketing teams who must determine how to serve the different segments of the customer base effectively and efficiently. We recently built a segmented marketing funnel at Expensify. Identify your segments.
online - Internet-Werbung auf dem Fernseher Immer mehr Menschen surfen im Web, während sie fernsehen. Das kalifornische Start-up Flingo will diese beiden Welten nun auf neue Weise zusammenführen und für Nutzer von Internet-TV-Geräten Online-Inhalte – und das heißt vor allem: Anzeigen – in Echtzeit an die jeweiligen Sendungen anpassen. Ob TV-Shows, DVDs oder Videodateien – das "Sync Apps" genannte System soll jede beliebige Bildquelle auswerten können, berichtet Technology Review in seiner Online-Ausgabe. Die Hard- und Software für die Fernseher, die hierfür nötig sind, sollen Ende des Jahres auf den Markt kommen. "Jede Webseite und jede App kann auf die Flingo-Server zugreifen, um herauszufinden, was bei Ihnen gerade läuft", verspricht David Harrison, Mitgründer und technischer Leiter von Flingo. Was Harrison begeistert, dürfte manchen Beobachter jedoch leicht an den berüchtigten Televisor aus George Orwells "1984" erinnern. Mehr zum Thema in Technology Review online: Der Fernseher glotzt zurück(bsc)
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.