garry blogs

The FlowBarrel™ is the more challenging of the two sheet waves at Wave House Sentosa – 100,000 gallons of water a minute flowing as fast as 30 mph (48 kmph) curl over a surface that looks like a section of a skateboard park. The result is a perfect, endlessly tubing six-foot wave that has similar power and challenge to many of the waves breaking along the reefs of Indonesia.

Geez I can’t wait! Of course, I’m gonna have to try the more basic version first

Evernote shares its story (link above) on going Freemium. It has a huge user base (additional 4,500 users try it every day, with 1.4m people within the first 18 months). I’m a very loyal user myself, but my needs are within the “free” limits, so lucky me - I don’t have to pay a cent.

A good read, but for me, it raises another question. How viable is the Freemium if model your product is targeting SMEs?

Even for companies with huge user bases, freemium may not turn out sustainable. Skype has failed in that model. YouTube and Flickr are still trying very hard to make it work.

As Phil says, perhaps it’s true that it only works for companies who can (1) drive customer loyalty and (2) drive down costs while constantly improving their product.

What about for products targeting SMEs with a significantly smaller user base? Comments?