Home

For those of you extremely concerned about your Facebook privacy settings in the wake of Facebooks f8 conference and the release of their Open Graph API – which allows developers to store your available data for as long as they want (instead of storing it for 24-hours as directed previously) and the launch of Facebooks “Instant Cross-Site Personalization” feature which customizes your experience on partner websites by accessing your data –  then you need to use this new open source tool called Reclaim Privacy. It is a small browser bookmarklet run by a snippet of Javascript which, when you are logged into Facebook, will scan your privacy settings and inform you of the relevant privacy settings for your profile. To get it working, basically:

1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmark
3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.
4. Update your settings and then delete the bookmarklet.

When you do this, you will see something like this menu pop-up above your profile which will give you a rating of your relevant privacy settings:

You can then click on each of the relevant links highlighted in blue to get taken to the relevant privacy page to update your privacy settings. Alternatively, you can simply click on the relevant options to Prevent Data Sharing and the bookmarklet will automatically update your settings. I am recommending this bookmarklet because the site clearly states that they

• never see your Facebook data
• never share your personal information

And most importantly – the code is open source so you can actually see where the data is being sent (which is absolutely nowhere when I checked the source code). This gave me a reassurance in using it and I would strongly recommend you follow the steps above and then simply delete the bookmarklet from your browser bar.

Of course, if you aren’t concerned about anything – then you don’t need to bother. But to just highlight how ignorant people are – check out OpenBook. This site is devoted to exposing users status updates who have not updated their privacy settings on Facebook using the new Open Graph APIs. If you enter a search term, things can get pretty rough in terms of exposing users who don’t actually realise that their Status Updates and Profile is entirely public and available to everyone.

Either way, ReclaimPrivacy is a great little tool to quickly check all your Facebook Privacy Settings and update them appropriately.

Yes, it’s true – Apple have finally released the pricing details for Australia in relation to the coveted iPad and I almost fell over when I read them. The most amazing part – Australia hasn’t been insanely ripped off in relation to the pricing which is a great thing considering most of Apple’s product are overtly expensive. The pricing is basically identical to that of USA when incorporating the conversion rate and GST. As Apple’s Official Press Release states, the iPad pricing for Australia is:

Wifi Only

• $629 – 16GB [$499 USD at Exchange Rate of $0.88 - $560 + 10% GST [$56]= $616 which isn’t too bad at all]
• $759 – 32GB
• $879 – 64GB

3G Pricing

• $799 – 16GB
• $928 – 32GB
• $1049 – 64GB

Given that Apple usually increases Australian prices by around 30% in comparison to our USA counterparts – despite any associated exchange rate differences – I was expecting the iPad to be priced around $700 – $750 AUD range. Evidently, I think that would have priced too many people out of the market for the iPad and many Australian’s would question whether this is within the permissible range of their budget or whether it’s simply more economically efficient to go and purchase a new computer. Granted, the iPad is a ‘cool’ multi-functional device but the more expensive models are the ones that really have the best functionality in terms of 3G connectivity.

Would I buy one ? No. That’s primarily because I already have an iPhone and this is more than useful enough in terms of reading web-pages. Adding this to the existing PC and iMac – I just don’t see when or where I would use something like an iPad. The use case that it presents for me at the moment does not scale up the utility curve that much. That’s not to say that it wouldn’t be a great device to use for reading or watching movies while chilling out on the couch. My old chunky laptop is fine and dandy for checking the web [that's cool enough for me though] and the sleekness of the iPad evidently is more comfortable to hold & move around – but I’m just not willing to fork out $630 AUD when the new iPhone is being released soon and the feature set included in this will more than compensate.

I guess if I was asked the question – new iPad or new iPhone? [and budgetary constraints only allow me to choose one] – well, the later wins by a mile over the former – simply because the utility of the later is so much greater than the former. In my mind, it has been a little unfortunate for Apple since had the iPad been released earlier and not when it’s about to overlap a pending product release [the new iPhone expected in June] – then it might have been a better proposition to many people. For me, a new iPhone is a much greater value proposition than a new iPad and better yet – companies like Virgin Mobile basically subsidize the phone over a 12 or 24 month period.

So while I welcome the iPad, I await for the next iPhone.

I am typically very wary of venturing into the extremes of political activism and voicing concerns in relation to Governmental policy. Socially, the discussion of political issues is typically a facet of ones personal life which – in it’s infancy – draws deep parallels to that of ones parents – and, I would certainly hope, as one ages – develops into a personal and individual understanding of the policies and legislative implementations affecting Australians now and into the future.

By admission – I am a swing voter. I don’t vote on haircuts, or a politicians demeanor, or even the shirt, jacket, tie or skirt combinations that seem to be the collective extension of some voters opinions on political parties in Australia today. Indeed, the beauty of Australia is that indeed some people can vote on these aspects and while I may fervently disagree with such uneducated and uncaring notions – it’s fantastic that in our free democratic society – a person can express their individual rights to vote how they like and on what basis. Too many wars have been fought to save this democratic right and cast it aside carelessly. Myself – I choose to actually read the policies and legislative instruments that each party is attempting to impose on our Country and determine whether – in my opinion – this is truly going to shape the path forward for Australia now and into the future.

Indeed, this genuine care for our country is why this post has arisen.

For long time readers of this blog – it’s undoubtedly evident that I am a person who is deeply passionate about Technology, Law and the Internet. This passion is almost now 12 years strong and continues to grow as I and a small team of developers – develop our own technology – and as I continue to explore the legislative instruments which govern intellectual property in both Australia and abroad. The truth is – all Australian’s should be concerned about the growth of technology – the opportunities and risks it presents to our society and the increasingly reliance that our country places on it’s unfettered dominance. The future of technology holds increasing promise – from medical advances, to the streamlining of national security, to social and gaming endeavors - technology is becoming an ever increasing part of our lives.

This is why you must advocate a deep & passionate opposition to Senator Stephens Conroy plan to ‘filter the internet’ in Australia. Join Facebook Group Here.

Before my scathing criticism of this Senator’s supposed endeavor begins – it’s useful to turn your mind back just 10 years to the start of the new millennium – the year of 2000. Indeed, the world was ‘apparently’ going to end on the stroke of midnight on December 31st 1999 due to the Millennium Bug or Y2k. Yes, there was a run on funds in banks and huge increases in the purchasing of non-perishable food items – a common site both domestically and around the world. The result? No big bang - albeit due to extremely hard work of many companies (and indeed many overpriced contractors) and the problem that was the Y2K bug dissipated in the end.

In the Year 2000 you were undoubtedly using a Nokia mobile phone – the dominant mobile phone of choice at the time – and were sending text-messages at a ridiculous charge out rate as the dominance of Generation Y’ers took hold. You were probably also searching the Internet using Alta-vista or Yahoo – the super powers of the Internet at the time – and checking your email on Hotmail. No doubt – the operating system your PC was running on was Windows 98 or 2000 (around February of 2000). If you were really hip – you might have even stumbled onto a Mac computer – the iMac G3. Yes, the world of technology in Australia was at a tipping point.

Of course, to now look at the socially-connected-information-rich-mobile-driven-flat-screen-gaming society of Australia today – you can only smile in awe. Google has risen to dominate the Internet in just 10 short years and bring information to the masses in ways which was never – perhaps even conceptually – thought possible. The collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000 was the lowest point for technology at the turn of the millennium - driven by hyper-inflated valuations and unsustainable business models. In the post-dot-com era – the rise and rise of the internet has accelerated technologies advanced in unprecedented ways. From Google Search, to Skype, to Facebook, to Youtube, to Wikiepdia, to Twitter and beyond – you can now share with the world your laughter, tears, thoughts, dreams, opinions and information. This is core aspect of the socially connected world we now live in – you – yes, you – have the right to do as you please on the Internet. To talk about what you like, to dream about what you like, to create what you like, and to access content which is within the permissible realms of the law. It is my belief that you should also be allowed to discuss, talk and speak about issues which also fall outside it – this is fundamental aspect of Australian society.

This is also the definition of a true democratic society.

The structure of the political system in our country – namely, the separation of powers – is founded on the notions that we cannot become an autocratic society because our legislative, judicial and administrative arms are separate. This founding basis cannot and should not be forgotten – now or into the future. Yet, it is my strong belief – that Senator Stephen Conroy’s plan to filter the Internet in Australia reeks of political ineptitude, misunderstanding and a genuine reduction of democratic values our country has long been founded on and holds so dear. Indeed, as a previous political heavyweight once stated (and one whose policies I did not always agree with)

Australia is not the kind of country where you would feel comfortable if you were opposed to democracy, parliamentary law, independent courts and so I would say to people who don’t feel comfortable with those values there might be other countries where they’d feel more comfortable with their own values or beliefs – Peter Costello

The reality is – a reduction of democratic values leads to a reduction of ones liberties  and any reduction in the right to free speech is arguably a reduction of theses rights (enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights). The cornerstone – and indeed the core objective of the Internet Filter proposed by Senator Conroy is stated as

The core purpose of the plan stems from the the Draft Guidelines of the International Telecommunication Union. Senator Conroy wishes to

introduce legislative amendments to require all ISPs in Australia to use ISP‑level filtering to block overseas hosted Refused Classification (RC) material on the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) RC Content list.

The fly in the ointment in this statement is that the Refused Classification (RC) list is not available to the general public and the legislative amendments proposed are broadly defined and wholly encompassing. That is, neither you or I would even know of the sites being blocked, flagged to be blocked or those which are now unblocked. There is no question – it would act in part – like the Great Firewall of China. To illustrate just how encompassing the legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 may be – if website A was hacked and RC classification was shoved on the site – and a competitor who runs website B then decided to complain about such material, then Website A would undoubtedly hit the governments blacklist. No questions. No appeal process. No information passed to rectify the problem. Access to Australian’s – and indeed me – would ‘vanish’. The transparency and procedural fairness of the proposed amendments are entirely non-existent – natural justice is in no way served.

Relevantly, to suggest in any manner, that I object to the protection of children online, is nonsensical. There is no doubt that children need greater protection online than teenagers and adults (of course, this is arguable as well given the somewhat idiotic tendencies of the two). But the manner and mode in which Senator Conroy’s plan is being structured is built to fail. Those who seek to abuse systems are often those who seek to abuse the foundations on which they are built. Such logic infers that the very nature of filters can be by-passed through proxy cloaking – or even more simply, purchasing a server in the USA and accessing content from it – in addition to the plethora of additional methodologies available to accessing material through VPN’s and even extra-jurisdictional VPN’s in Eastern-European countries who have no restrictions or filtering on Internet content.

Even an idiot could search Google for “Proxy Servers” or “Virtual Private Networks” and find a range of products to provide them connections to computers located in other countries – a simple way to by-pass any filtering system. The reality is the filter uses a basic system of IP – Internet Protocol Address – filtering. That is, any time you connect to the Internet in Australia through your Internet Service Provider – you are provided with an IP Address. For example, a well known block of IP addresses in Australia are within an approximate range of 60.220.XXX.XXX to 60.250.XXX.XXX and accurate lists of such ranges are freely available by companies such as MaxMind or IP2Location. You can check you IP address now by simply visiting – whatismyip.org – and you’ll see your unique address. The proposed filter basically takes all IP Address’ at the ISP level – which ensures they are Australian – and applies the filtering system to them on a URL basis. Change your IP address to one located in an extra-jurisdictional country – America, Sweden, Russia etc – and you immediately bypass any filtering system because the connection your ISP ‘sees’ is one which is not prohibited. Your ISP thinks you are just accessing a server in another country and then you are free to access whatever you want – whenever you want it – making the whole system fundamentally flawed.

The unfathomable truth is that those who wish to view content will educate themselves on ways in which they can access it. Logic suggests that such approaches should be mirrored to those who do not wish to access it. Are we so ignorant to forget so quickly what Nelson Mandella – one of the greatest proponents of democracy in the free-world – stated

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

and yet our society is so quick to forget it. The protection of children online stems from a pure and realistic education of the dangers that lurk online and the consequential horrors that can result. The young inquisitive mind is evidently going to explore the internet and should be allowed too. The domain of such exploration should fall on the parents of the child and simple strategies such as requiring a child to access the internet in an open and transparent environment would go a very long way to solving this problem. Transparency is what sets the world free while the cloak of secrecy merely seeks to suffocate societal advance.

To this date, I struggle – given the 174 submissions provided to the Australian Media and Communication Authority – that the plan is still attempting to be tabled in parliament. Why ask for submissions from some of the smartest technologies companies in the country if you are simply going to ignore them? The most prominent of the submissions to the AMCA are – for example – from Google – a strong opponent of the plan. Indeed, as Google highlight on Pages 3 and 4 – the most effective tools to combat Online Safety are:

1. Education
2. Search and Software Tools
3. Legislative empowerment of Law Enforcement Agencies

Evidently, it is through the promotion of these three items which would allow more effective ‘Filtering’ to take place than any ISP level architecture. A simple and effective methodology would be to propose legislative amendments to Federal and State law enforcement agencies to increase sentence terms and pecuniary penalties for those found violating the law in relation to child pornography material. Longer sentence terms are an effective measure which categorically increase the ‘core risk’ to those who wish to engage in the dissemination and viewing of such abhorrent material.

The reality of Internet filtering is that the problem is not a singularly-based jurisdictional issue – blocking content here does not mean the content does not exist. The content very still much resides on a server – somewhere on the planet and is therefore accessible. The key issue is how such content is found by those looking for it, and you can rest assured that the networks built around repulsive material are not only based on message boards, but on skype and other real-time technical mechanisms – a facet which cannot be stopped by any means of ‘URL Filtering’. Indeed, the problem is multi-faceted and passes through many vertical and horizontal channels. This is elegantly framed in Article 1(3) of the United Nations Charter – which Australia is a signatory of – which articulates that the purpose of the UN is

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

While, it is universally and realistically accepted, that any attempt to achieve a resolution through the United Nations would take around (lets say) 10 years to achieve given the speed at which veto powers are directed. The better and more realistic approach is to create bi-and-multilateral agreements with our neighbours in relation to the internet content and standardise criminal and pecuniary enforcement in respect to the accessibility and dissemination of such content. Introducing a filter, as Senator Conroy proposes, with a wide legislative scope – does not in any way seek to advance the democratic society we live in and does not make the content “disappear” – the perceived intended aim. A wide filter also will undoubtedly “catch” a significant amount of content which is not offensive at all but which may have been mistakingly added to the list or which the Administrative Delegate holds personal views upon.

Indeed, the right to access information is a fundamental right and promotes discussion, debate and indeed increases transparency across all sectors of our society. The reduction of such transparency does not seek to promote intelligent debate as much as it restricts it. Of course, all of the above has not even touched on the technical nuances that such a plan creates. Indeed, the own Technical Pilot conducted by the Government – on which the majority of it’s proposed amendments are based – omitted (as Google highlights on Page 10)

1. Testing a blacklist of up to 10,000 urls
2. Testing a representative cross section of ISPs
3. Testing new technologies such as IPv6
4. Gathering the costs of filtering

Evidently, it seems that the Government has taken the approach of – “Let’s try 100 sites … oh that works – now lets filter the Internet’. Relevantly, such an approach is entirely absurd and fails to demonstrate the case for Internet Filtering. It is perhaps this point which is so illogically debated. The Government has not even satisfied the relevant testing requirements in relation to Internet Filtering and their attempt to impose mandatory filtering on all ISP’s in Australia is untested on a large strategic rollout (look at the national insulation scheme as evidence of this). This begs the question – to what detriment will Internet filtering place on the speed of your Internet connection ? The large number of submissions tendered to the ACMA suggest a significant reduction due to the increase processing and “checking” (aka filtering) when accessing content.

Putting aside the long number of additional technical issues I could discuss (given the length of this post already) – the key and perhaps most important point is – the Internet is dynamic. Any proposed websites which are banned will be reviewed and a relevant case must be prepared by the ACMA Administrative Delegate in relation to whether the site should be added to any constructed blacklist. Indeed, as soon as a site becomes inaccessible – those who wish to access the site could be simply contact the site owners, ask them to replicate the site onto another URL, on another server, with another IP address in a matter of seconds (made even easier by the prominence of virtualization technology) and the so called “filter” is now useless again. There will be countless processes such as this one which could take place and indeed even more sophisicated methodologies to trancend the ‘boundaries’ of internet filtering.

In conclusion, your access to the Internet should be open and free within the bounds of the law. If your access extends outside those boundaries – increased legislative power should be provided to those relevant agencies to prosecute your actions and the judicial arm should serve strong sentences as a result. This should of course, be coupled with education and software restrictions, which ensure that children are in no way abused when accessing the Internet. Parent accountability also plays a significant role in a child’s experience on the Internet and is perhaps an often too forgotten aspect. Fundamentally, the Internet is designed as a resource to engage in discussion and debate, to view content, to share experiences and enrich your life with information – it is not a medium which should be restricted by a closed and ambigous filter with no procedural transparency and which can be easily abused by an overzealous Government – or individual Government official – in determining which content should be viewed by it’s populous.

Write letters, vote against Senator Conroy, contact your local Minister – voice your concern. These legislative amendments must not be enacted or content on the Internet as you know will change in Australia forever. It is unquestionable that through knowledge one grows power, and the Internet provides that to all citizens in Australia – regardless of political standing, religion or belief. Legislation should not be enacted to increase ambiguity – more transparency is needed in our country – not less. There is no question – the future generations of Australian depend on us.

Do something now.  Join Facebook Group Here.

Wow, so the reaction to the launch of our new FlucMedia site has been amazing with lots of positive feedback from design websites and from people who have visited the site and generally love it. Perhaps, what has been more amazing to our team has been the reaction to our IE6 Not Supported implementation - spurned from articles at Mashable and numerous other sites which have commented on IE6 and it’s viability as a browser. You only have to look at the numerous sites which have popped up asking users or corporates to ditch IE6 – Bring Down IE6, IE6 No More, Stop IE6 – the list goes on and on.

So what are the main issues?

The main problems with IE6 stem from the sheer age and out-dated technology associated with the browser. The primary problems with the browser are three-hold:

1. PNG Transparency – *.PNG image are not officially supported by the IE6 browser which significantly stops many websites across the Internet from being correctly displayed. *.PNG images can be compressed immensely (*.PNG8 images) in comparison to other images which significantly increases webpage load time. Accordingly, browser support of these images vastly increases the speed of the web and reduces bandwidth and so forth.
2. CSS v2 – The IE6 browser does not correctly support v2 Cascading Style Sheets and this infers that what works in IE6 won’t work to the same degree in other browsers. Most of the time, this substantially increases the size of CSS sheets as additional classes have to be added specifically for IE6 or a web team has to have an entirely separate IE6 style sheet just for IE6 – increasing development time and most importantly – cost. An option not always available to all companies (aka us).
3. Security & Reliability - IE6 is extremely susceptible to the new web because it was designed for the old web. Hackers can easily inject code into websites which can cause the IE6 browser to crash and cause major problems for users. This makes sense of course because the browser is 8 years old and was designed at a time when javascript was not king. Now of course, javascript is used extremely widely and requires heavy processing which IE6 was just not designed for. You just have to look at Wikipedia to see all the issues.

What is Microsoft response?

The increasing resistance from the web community has lead Dean Hachamovitch – the Head of IE team at Microsoft - to respond. In his blog post – he rationally justifies the existence of the IE6 web browser as one that is inherently left up to the individual entity – whether person or corporate. To quote him,

The choice to upgrade software on a PC belongs to the person responsible for the PC.

I tend to agree with this logic … up to a point. Increasingly it seems that many people are criticising the exclusion of IE6 on the basis of “users have no choice and are left at the whim of their corporate environment”. Even we have been criticized - you only have to look at the comments in this post to see that not everyone is happy about our exclusion of the IE6 Browser and I absolutely respect that opinion. However, as I commented in return – corporate entities take the view that they don’t have the time or the resources to update their software to support modern browsers – we’ll we certainly don’t have the time to code and spend resources on supporting their refusal.

Change always comes about slowly when dealing with new technology in large corporate entities. Most of the time, it only ends up changing in these environments when enough people advocate for change and become generally disgruntled at their working environment. The entire premise – as even Dean Hachamovitch from Microsoft stated – is to upgrade all PC’s to modern browsers for safety, security and speed reasons – Microsoft want this just as much as anyone else. And while I accept the notion of choice for corporate entities – I also believe that corporates much accept the notion of choice from technology companies in refusing to code just for IE6.

How have we handled it?

For us, it really has nothing to do with “doing anyone any favors” or “saving the Internet” by blocking IE6 users. The simple fact of the matter is that we are a small company and just don’t have the resources to devote an additional XXX hours to solve IE6 related issues primarily when support for the browser is undoubtedly waining. We would rather devote this time to focusing on, and building out, our product as opposed to sitting and attempting to figure out IE6 legacy browser issues. It seems that many corporate companies are taking that exact reverse approach – “we don’t have the time or resources to upgrade to IE7 – so everyone has to cope with it”. A view (as conveyed above) not supported by us.

Indeed, it may be antithetical to the logic that “most IE6 users don’t have a choice” – for us, the choice is really spending time on IE6 or spending time developing our product -we made the decision that the later is far more important. Our product supports IE6 – have no doubt – but when we calculated out the cost of solving IE6 issues for the website and more importantly the time required – the cost-equation just didn’t make sense in terms of IE6 users vs. new features we can develop. Additionally, it seems pretty clear that many of the big corporates are also pushing users away from IE6 – you only have to visit Youtube or Facebook or Basecamp or a plethora of other sites to see that IE6 is either no longer supported (Basecamp for example) or won’t be in 2010 (Youtube).

Microsoft are also pushing IE8 through their distribution channels – even offering incentives to upgrade from IE6 – in addition to Chrome, Firefox and Safari – so it doesn’t really make sense to spend hundreds of hours ensuring that every works in IE6 when the browser will start to hit a brick wall from next year – 2010 – on a lot of websites. I would also argue that it’s very website dependent – if you are a site that is going to primarily targeted by other website publishers – then it’s fair to assume that they are not going to be using IE6 – on the flip site, news sites are targeted by the masses so you undoubtedly have no choice but to support IE6. In this regard, the nature of the website is also fairly important in the decision making process as to exclude IE6 entirely and the users attached to this browser.

How can you exclude IE6 if you want to?

So in order to exclude IE6 we have used some really easy code commenting. If you checkout FlucMedia you can see how we have done this -

Through the insertion of comment which redirects the IE6 browser to the IE6NotSupported.html page. While many of you may not accept the logic of excluding users to our website – our rationalization is that as a small company we are more product focused in rolling our new features than supporting almost 9 year old legacy browsers. Feel free to copy & use our implementation if you want too – a linkback might be nice too :)

Conclusion

As Microsoft stated – it’s all about choice. Our choice is not to support IE6 and we believe it to be a justified one :)

Agree or not? Drop a comment.

You know, it’s amazing – the slogan “The Wonderful World of Disney” no longer makes me think about Disney. I have since destroyed this one fantastic childhood slogan that was instilled in me from the age of about 3 and replaced it with “The Wonderful World of Free”. Yes, it’s perhaps a little sad but working on a technology startup tends to do that too you when you are trying to establish viable revenue streams for your business.

You see the world of “Free” has really taken over the Internet. Content is now consumed on the Internet at a rate that has never been witnessed around the world before, and people who access the Internet expect this content to be free. The predominant reason for this is that people pay for their access to the Internet and believe that this is the ceiling point for their use of products and services on it. Take content for example, I read an article on the NY Times website from a fantastic author regarding the state of the Internet. If this author intended on charging me to read the article – I am presented with two options:

1. I can simply pay for the article because the authors writing, style, opinion and experience on the topic supersedes any other content available and the value equation of his writing exceeds any other content available (or that I can find).
2. I can simply scour the Internet looking for similar articles which comment on adjacent subject matter that is relevant to the thought process I am attempting to collate in my head. If the end justifies the means and I discover relevant content which is free – no need to pay and my value equation is satisfied.

You see Internet users now expect content on the Internet to remain free. The age of “charging” for content – or any products or services for that matter – is only valid when the consumer cannot get that particular content, or that particular product or service anywhere else. The value equation for the user has to reach the climatic point where attempting to search for similar content can, and simply does not, satisfy the users needs. It’s at this point, and I believe only at this point, that a user will cough up some hard earnt dollars in order to satisfy their desire to pay for products and services on the Internet.

If we take another example that is more prevalent in this day and age – Facebook. People use and consume content on Facebook everyday and just expect the services to work. The mere fact that it costs Facebook millions of dollars per month to provide these users with this service is irrelevant to those whom consume such said content and use it daily. After all, the service started out as free and users expect it to remain that way – right?

Of course, that’s right – it’s Facebook duty to monetize their business and ensure that they keep providing their services to their users otherwise they will simply change to another service. It’s important to recognise that Internet users are fickle and perhaps they have every right to be – the Internet has an abundance of information and hands the power back to consumers to find the best offering at the lowest value – whether this be in real economic terms or in ‘free’ terms.

So we come to the question that exceedingly enroaches on my mind daily – how can a service such as Facebook “remain free” ad-infinitum? Surely, an apex point will some day arrive where the cost of running the company entirely exceeds the value equation relating to revenue generation? Or perhaps more probably, the product that Facebook is offering no longer fulfills the desire of the millions of users who connect and use Facebook everyday. It is somewhat happening to Myspace, and it is possible that it will happen to Facebook. Facebook was inherently designed for a specific purpose – to share and communicate with friends – yet such a statement does have its idiosyncarcies. The world we are moving into is one where this statement is no longer simply enough – Internet users now, more than ever, demand real-time and up-to-date information in a format that Facebook might not be able to provide moving into the future. Even the design change on Facebook took months, if not a full year, to implement and users are still unhappy about it. But I digress from the purpose of this post (and perhaps this topic deserves another seperate post in itself)

They key question I am really trying to answer is what about all the other products and services out there who simply do not have 1/10000th of the financial capacity of a company like Facebook?

Well, it’s clear that such companies offering these free products and services will simply not cut the cheese in a rescissionary climate where advertising revenue no longer pays for development, hosting, marketing and the like. The days of offering a free product – no strings attached – are long gone in my opinion. The Internet is ruled by a fickle generation of users who demand – no – expect content and services to be free, and if they aren’t – they simply move on. For every paid product on the Internet, 5 more are competing with it that are free. For every service that is launched and becomes popular – another 10 spring up which offer the same service for free. 

So how is it ever possible to beat this seemingly caustic like trend?

The answer is simple – continually innovate. 

There is no other solution to the free problem that to continually innovate and offer features, products, services and content that no one else does, can or has the expertise to provide. Consumers will only pay for products when no other solution exists that meets their value equation. More poignantly, consumers will only pay when for products when no other solution exists that meets their value equation, and the solution that does exist exactly satisfies their needs. There is just no point in producing a great product that no one else has which simply sucks – you wouldn’t pay for it and neither would anyone else (me included). The ideology that needs to be entrenched in all companies (startup and Fortune 500 alike) is effectively this - why pay Peter when Paul is standing around offering everything  for free? Well, I contend that if Peter has something that Paul can simply not offer then Peter gets a new revenue source. If the converse holds true, Paul rears his ugly opportunistic head and takes Peters earnings. 

I believe this really is the unfortunate – nay, perhaps the realistic and capitalist minded truth. Innovation is the key to a great product or service, and a great service is the key to profitability. I believe it’s true to contend that the three are symbiotic in nature – that is, the correlation between innovation, great products and services and profitability is extrodinarily high. The dominance is, however, in my opinion innovation – loose that, and the other elements wilt. The consequence?

Darwinian theory tell us that something else will take it’s place.