Although most are trying to figure out what exactly the Web  3.0 will be, I like to take a moment and show you what the business model of Web 2.0 was and what is happing today with web a.k.a Web 2.5.

The best way to explain what was the predominant business plan of the Web 2.0 companies, let take a look at this clip from the South Park episode called Gnomes (or “Underpants Gnomes”):

Finished? Cool stuff how the Gnomes business model and Web 2.0  look alike. Here is the comparison:

The success of Google gave “permission” to a bunch of VCs and companies to launch a “cool” or “innovative” way of using the web, getting a bunch of registered users and then (if no big company wants to buy them) try to figure out how to make money i.e facebook and youtube. Being  twitter and friendfeed  the last famous companies of the batch to use Gnomes business model.

With the economic recession [in other words realizing that we can't just waste money on promises and bet on money we don't have], it’s harder for web companies to get funding, if they don’t have clear revenue model (other than advertisement). So, today in the Web 2.5, companies like Vimeo, Animoto, Userfly and Mailchimpp, offer a trial or basic version of the service for free. If you want or need more advance features you can pay a subscription fee or paying as you go. Generally the “pay as you go” is for occasional users. What is interesting is that this is not a new business model, its basically the same used by companies behind  famous “shareware” software. But because the trend is to provide “software as a service” hosted on the “cloud” then, they took the principal of the shareware model and applied it to services. It will not be called the “shareware” model because its not software that you download and installed ( you just log and run it in your browser). The contemporary name is “freemium“.

Finally what is Web 2.5, well here is my kind of chaotic definition:

• Use freemium (or any variation) as their business model
• “the design style is really a re-emergence of the pre-web standards era of the late nineties”
• refocus on mashups and APIs
• target is less mainstream (as a result of a focus on making money)
• better user experience
• transition phase, were the lessons learn from web 2.0, are applied.

Userfly is a service that permits site owners, record the sessions of their visitors. All you need to put a script in your website and viola.  Its a pretty cool and useful tool, because you see how your visitors “behave” in the website, as well what works and what doesn’t.

When you sign up they give you 10 session recordings for free and if you want more you pay for them, at a price of 0.05 USD. Bellow is an image showing the “Buy Now” button, above it is a message that states: “Buy as many user session captures as you need for only $0.05 per capture. Captures are sold 100 at a time”.

Uh?? I can buy as many I need, but the only way to buy new captures is 100 at a time, it doesn’t make sense.

The first sentence states that I can buy as many captures I want. Sure, I need 30 more sessions that is 1.50 USD. However captures are sold 100 at a time, then what about the other 70 sessions captures I don’t need? I can use them latter, sell them to a friend, etc,  that is not the point. The point is that the company looks bad, cheap and unsecure of their product. If the product is good, why not use something that is clearer and direct:

100 captures for 5.00 USD. Captures are sold 100 at a time.

or

Minimum is 100 captures, at 0.05 USD each.

Is like buying fruit or vegetable at a market: 20 tomatoes for 5 USD, 3 mangos for 7 USD, etc.

I’m not questioning the 100 limit, they have their reasons. I guess many customers will end up using the 100 captures, because of the number of visitors a site might have. Also, they are targeting owners of business website, not the “Videos of Cat Blog” or “My Life As a Teen” blog using WordPress or Blogger.

[Yeah its might sound as a big deal, but is insulting to trying NOT to scare customers using the “5 cent” strategy. Actually, I tried to find a an email where to suggest them to change that pricing statement, couldn’t find any, so I decided to blog about it.]

The CEO of a company should be aware of what is going on the website, how the pricing is presented to the customer, not an intern. Pricing of products and services needs to be done carefully and after a lot of analysis. The wrong price may scare possible customers, or the company may miss out on revenue that will make the company profitable.

Today with Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and similar services, you upload your photos and then anybody of your “friends” can see them. They comment, tag and share with other friends, I can see the excitement on your face. Some people like it, is part of their lives now to do so, however there is no “feeling” on those pictures. There is no way for you to tell people in a “entertaining way” how was that moment. In movies, soundtracks are an integral part on emoting feeling from the viewers. Why don’t we enhance the experience of those “friends”, didn’t live that moment with you?

Enter Animoto

Animoto is a services that permits you to create remixed slideshows of your pictures with music. The effects are cool, funky and entertaining, as well as “dance” with the tempo of the soundtrack you select . The site does all the effects and they claim that there is no equal remix, using an AI engine. (Regarding the last feature of going with the tempo of your track, it didn’t quite work that way as you can notice below.)

The free version gives your the ability to do 30 seconds shorts. You can’t download the clip but you can share with a bunch of social media platforms i.e. Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, Blogger, WordPress. The service permits you to upload the soundtracks and pictures from your PC and import images from your Flickr, Picasa and Facebook account. Need more freedom and power:  like download, convert to High Def, create full length videos control pacing and do other stuff, will need to pay.

It doesn’t take much time, 12 images is the sweet spot on creating a nice video that will tell the story of a party or weekend. You can upload the images to your favorite social media site and then create the short. Those that want a quick glimpse can do it through the video and those that want to check how they look and relieve the moment through comments, can look at the album. If you ask me is pretty sweet.

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As you can see, the tempo of the images and the music don’t match.