An old friend and I had dinner the other night, and he told me that a friend of his was starting a company focused on rating the customer service of online sites. Why? E-commerce sites can no longer compete on price or shipping, and so customer service has become the new frontier.<\/p>\n
That’s a fascinating concept in the “free” economy world of Web2.0. I don’t, however, think that that’s sustainable anymore, and more and more examples are proving as much.<\/p>\n
I’ve just read an article on TechCrunch about PicPlum<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0Their whole premise is that the best photographs are worth paying more for. Would you rather send many, poor quality photos, or 15 high-quality photos? I, personally, would like to have a budget per month, and mix and match size and quality against that budget. If you’re going to ask me to pay more, then give me complete customizability. I’m not sure if that’s where they’re going with their concept, but I like the fact that PicPlum is trying to bring value to something that WalMart has tried to turn into a commodity.<\/p>\n One might call that the Apple strategy in that Apple has brought value back to the laptop market where Dell had turned it into a commodity item. IBM, with their ThinkPad division, tried and failed, and so it’s not easy said, easy done.<\/p>\n What’s more, content generators are finding themselves moving away from free as well. The NYTimes showed really solid online subscription numbers this last quarter, and Fred Wilson’s blog about porous paywalls<\/a> shows that a new medium may be forming for content. This is definitely a good sign for folks who believe in the value of journalism, of which I am one, and is another simple example of the reversal of the trend towards free.<\/p>\n Even clones of the early Web2.0 services such as del.icio.us (Pinboard<\/a>) and flickr (500px<\/a>) are starting to, and able to, charge.<\/p>\n I wonder if this is a function of the consumer getting wiser, or if it’s a matter of businesses realizing that the race to zero is no longer a sustainable business model. It could simply be that the indestructible revenue model which was Internet ads doesn’t actually make for a good experience and good web service, and we are now demanding both from our web applications.<\/p>\n Regardless of the why, I think it’s pretty clear that the race to zero has stopped, and that in its place the Web is seeing a resurgence of opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An old friend and I had dinner the other night, and he told me that a friend of his was starting a company focused on rating the customer service of online sites. Why? E-commerce sites can no longer compete on price or shipping, and so customer service has become the new frontier. That’s a fascinating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[65,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-93","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":558,"url":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2012\/09\/29\/end-of-life-for-rainbow-hat-guy\/","url_meta":{"origin":561,"position":0},"title":"End of life for Rainbow Hat Guy","date":"September 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm killing off the Rainbow Hat Guy persona, and will bring over my favorite posts from that site to this one. I'd like to write more, and that's going to take focus, and a single point of expression. Focus seems to be a theme generally in life these days, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rainbow Hat Guy transition"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":567,"url":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2012\/10\/03\/dont-blame-twitter-platforms-are-hard-re-posted-from-rainbow-hat-guy\/","url_meta":{"origin":561,"position":1},"title":"Don't blame Twitter. Platforms are hard (re-posted from Rainbow Hat Guy)","date":"October 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Dalton Caldwell\u00c2\u00a0has really stirred the pot about Twitter failing the Tim Berners-Lee vision of an open web by abandoning their platform strategy, failing to be data portable, and accepting ads as a business model. I wish him luck as he embarks on his journey with app.net\u00c2\u00a0to right those wrongs, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rainbow Hat Guy transition"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":565,"url":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2012\/10\/02\/building-consumer-tools-instead-of-consumer-products-re-posted-from-rainbow-hat-guy\/","url_meta":{"origin":561,"position":2},"title":"Building consumer tools instead of consumer products (re-posted from Rainbow Hat Guy)","date":"October 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I want to be able to simplify the interactions I have in a given day to a single purpose. As an example, I'd like to claim that the hammer is there to work with nails. But the hammer isn't that simple of a product. Similarly when people ask me what's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rainbow Hat Guy transition"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":505,"url":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2012\/02\/06\/post-mortem-on-aboutmydive-com\/","url_meta":{"origin":561,"position":3},"title":"Post-mortem on AboutMyDive.com","date":"February 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's post is over on The Rainbow Hat Guy blog. It's about what happened with my first project aboutmydive.com. Check it out, and let me know what you think.","rel":"","context":"In "Entrepreneurism"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1591,"url":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2015\/05\/16\/beekeeping-update-video-of-the-action\/","url_meta":{"origin":561,"position":4},"title":"Beekeeping update - Video of the action","date":"May 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I promised my dad I would make a video of an inspection with all of the action. Here's the intro video: Today's game plan was to fill up the sugar water, and then make sure that the hive is queen right. Queen right is just terminology to mean that there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in beekeeping"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1505,"url":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2015\/03\/24\/beekeeping-update\/","url_meta":{"origin":561,"position":5},"title":"Beekeeping update","date":"March 24, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The bees are ordered!They arrive on April 11. There will be a queen, and her newly adopted family of 10k bees.\u00a0I have 2 more frames to paint. I have an entire stand to build. And then the infrastructure to support the bees will be finished.\u00a0This weekend, I got to go\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in beekeeping"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}