Charge ‘em!

By Michael Goldstein on May 6th, 2010
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I’m inspired to write this from a couch in the middle of the Yola office in San Francisco.  It wasn’t at all the theme of the Web 2.0 Expo this week, but the conversation I had over and over again and the one I found most interesting was about building a profitable business in a world where users seem to expect everything for free.

In fact, it’s no different than the conversation I’ve had over the past couple of years with a friend that works at ABC News (that’s on television).  Users enjoy well-produced news.  Actually, they expect it.  Meanwhile, they won’t pay a fee for it.  They don’t want to watch the ads.  And, of course, advertisers can’t continue to pour money into media that doesn’t work for them.  Oh, and it’s pretty expensive to produce news.

Fred Wilson encourages his companies not to worry about revenue, to build a remarkable experience and attract millions of users.  Thus, Twitter.  And sure, it’s hard to imagine that Twitter won’t be able to earn a ton of revenue at some point.  Probably not from users.  Probably not from advertisers.  (I would never want to run paid advertising someplace that I’m considered an intrusion.  Wait, is there someplace that advertising is not considered an intrusion?  The Super Bowl, I guess.  Maybe the iPhone.  We’ll see.)  In their case, I suppose there has to be value in all that data.  OK, but someone then has to figure out how to get a return on all that data.  So, Twitter gives it away but may never monetize it.  Ning charges for it and they get crucified.

I’m thinking that if I was starting a Web service tomorrow, I’d lean toward charging users from the very beginning.  (My service would be so awesome that people would pay for it.)  I think consumers (which includes small businesses, I guess) are immature.  They need to understand that if the things they consume are really good it probably means that they cost money to provide.  If they cost money to provide and there’s not some philanthropic organization that’s willing to provide it, then they need to pay for it.

I’d offer a one week trial and then I’d charge!  I’d find out right away if my service has value, real value, to people and, if not, try something else.  Of course, someone else would come along and offer it for free.  I’d have to make the case that those people are going to go out of business at some point or their service is going to deteriorate because they don’t have any funds and you might as well pay me some reasonable amount and enjoy my service for many years to come.

I do not speak for all of OpenSRS, by the way.  (Internet geek idealists and socialists!)  Reporting live from Yola’s couch, that’s how I see it.

New! File Storage in OpenSRS Email Service

By James Koole on May 6th, 2010
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Starting today, we have a new File Storage feature available in OpenSRS Email Service. File Storage allows users of the webmail application to upload, manage and even publicly share files simply and easily.

Users of OpenSRS Email can send email attachments up to about 25MB in size. But sometimes users want to send larger files, or make files available to friends or other people without having to attach them to an email.

We built File Storage to address some of these needs. Users can upload photos, documents, zip files, PDFs, videos…pretty much anything they want…through File Storage. Space is allocated as part of their overall mailbox quota of 2GB.

Once the files are uploaded to the service, they can organize and even share files publicly.

Here’s how it works:

Resellers who are using OpenSRS Email Service will have received an email today with more details about how to enable it for your users.

Celebrating 25 Years of .com

By James Koole on April 28th, 2010
Posted in Industry News » Tags: ,
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VeriSign is celebrating 25 years of the .com domain extension this year and OpenSRS is thrilled to be a part of it.

Way back in 1985, Coke became New Coke and Old Coke became an instant Classic, Live Aid raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia, and both the Commodore Amiga and the NeXT computers were launched. Amid all that, a Massachusetts company registered the first .com domain name — symbolics.com.

Here we are, 25 years later. New Coke is gone, Live Aid is ancient history, Amiga and NeXT computers are museum pieces, but .com is going strong. To celebrate the milestone, VeriSign has rolled out a campaign that looks back at some of the events and people that shaped the Internet over the last quarter century. The focal point is the 25yearsof.com website which provides a hub for all the different activities, events and celebrations taking place this year.

The .com 25

One of the most interesting elements is the .com 25. Later this year, a panel of Silicon Valley influencers will select “the ‘.com 25′; the 25 people and/or companies whose inspiring contributions were fundamental in shaping the Internet and, thereby, our worlds.”

Head over to the 25yearsof.com website and you can see a list of the 75 finalists from which the .com 25 honourees will be selected. From companies like Amazon, Netscape and Cisco, to people like Vint Cerf, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Case, the list reads like a who’s-who of Internet history. I wouldn’t want to be on the jury that has to select just 25 people to honour as the .com 25.

The .com25 will be announced at a .com Gala event in San Francisco on May 26, 2010. The event celebrates the impact that 25 years of Internet innovation have had on society and looks forward to the next 25 years as well.

Take part in the celebration

You’re invited to take part in the 25yearsof.com events. There’s going to be lots of media attention paid to the various events taking place over the course of the year. You may wish to be a part of it by leveraging some of the 25yearsof.com marketing assets, and maybe build your own promotion around the events.

VeriSign is going to kick off a contest shortly called, “How do you .com?” They’ll be asking people around the world to answer that question and share how they use the Internet, and the .com extension in their lives.

If you would like to get involved, check out the 25yearsof.com website, their Facebook page, follow @25yearsofdotcom on Twitter and subscribe to their YouTube channel.

Drumbeat building an Open Web

By OpenSRS Team on April 27th, 2010
Posted in Events »
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Mozilla Foundation’s Drumbeat is gaining momentum. Drumbeat.org aims to use Mozilla’s experiences (open source community development and hacker ethic) to support and develop the Web. Their most recent event was held this past weekend was well attended by all different kinds of people from seasoned Internet veterans to average people with a passion for the Internet and the Web.

Drumbeat is a movement combining projects and events focused on making the web better, using open-source DNA and Know-How and focusing on “maker culture” and “building”.  Their goal is to engage a wider global audience in the active discussion and participation building an open web. The One Web Day team recently joined forces with Mozilla Drumbeat and at OpenSRS, we’re huge supporters of their initiatives and happy to carry over our support to Mozilla Drumbeat. If you’re interested in the Open Web, you’ll want to consider getting involved.

My OpenSRS colleagues and our resellers are often early adopters and proponents of all things Internet. We are the ambassadors who can engage others in our careers, families and neighbourhoods. A Tucows core values is “the Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever seen”. Drumbeat is built on that vision too. Will the web still be open in 100 years? What is your vision of the Internet? How can you help build it? In true Mozilla fashion, the brainstorm of “What is the open Web” can be found on their wiki.

About Drumbeat

Anyone can volunteer or suggest a Drumbeat project. Two projects that might be of interest to Resellers are P2PU: creating an Open Web Developer Degree and Web Made Movies: a video series highlighting people who are building an open, participatory Internet.

To spread the word about Drumbeat projects and build the open web movement, Drumbeat includes events across the world. Previous events were held in Rio and San Paulo, Brazil. At the recent Toronto event, the day included small scrum-like discussions on how to explain the open web to diverse audiences and topical discussions ranging from open source activism to MESH networks to HTML5 Video Players to building the Drumbeat.org community.

Drumbeat Toronto, April 24, 2010. Photo by Rokashi

How can you get involved?

Drumbeat projects are open for collaboration. Simply hop onto the Drumbeat site, join Drumbeat mailing lists, or read/subscribe to the Drumbeat newsletter. The next Drumbeat event is in Berlin on May 8, 2010. To attend, you can sign up for free here.

The Common Good

By Michael Goldstein on April 26th, 2010
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We’re working on a simple little initiative here that I’m excited about.  We’re putting together white-labeled tutorials and videos that guide end users through the process of transferring away from a bunch of top registrars.  The idea is that you can take these materials, maybe add your logo, maybe add specific instructions about how to transfer in on your end and publish them to your customers.  It’s just one example of a challenge that all our resellers have in common.  And there of are tons of them.  Make it easier for customers to transfer away from competitors.  Serve up more effective search results.  Convert better at checkout.  Increase usage of your services.  Improve renewal rates….

While we can pick a few obvious ones and try to provide you some resources ourselves, it occurs to me that there is potentially a bigger opportunity here.  There are 10,000 OpenSRS resellers all developing solutions to these types of problems every day.  You are writing bits of code on top of our API to improve your purchase paths and your control panels.  You are developing marketing materials and documentation.  You are experimenting with everything from pricing to promotions to newsletter subject headers.  Some of you are direct competitors.  But many more of you service such completely different geographies and customer segments and offer such different services that I don’t think you would regard each other as competitors at all.

So, it seems like there should be some opportunity to pool solutions, materials, best practices and data for the common good.  There’s a bit of this going on in the discussion forums, particularly with technical solutions.  But I think we can be doing so much more.  And I think we can potentially find creative ways to solicit contributions and reward contributors.  Maybe we should have taken the money we’re investing in developing these transfer tutorials ourselves, for example, and offered it to whichever reseller contributed the best transfer tutorials.  Maybe resellers can earn credits or other rewards by making contributions.  Maybe you have to contribute something in order to access what others have contributed.  Maybe you’d be excited enough about the movement to contribute without any direct reward!  (”…a dream that one day on the OpenSRS Web site, the sons of small Web design firms and the sons of large hosting companies will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…”)

It seems to me that you are not only facing common challenges but fighting common enemies.  It would be so cool to fight them together.

We’ll think more about structuring a real program here.  Meanwhile, we’d love to know how you would feel about contributing to something like this on a scale from, “Go to hell!” to “Hell yeah!”  Let us know.