There's no such thing as a free launch

2006 could be the year of online services - if users get respect

At first glance, it's hard to feel much sympathy when people complain that a free service has let them down. So what if TypePad crashed for a day or Flickr's uptime wobbled? Surely that's just what you should expect from an application that you downloaded from the Web during a few minutes of downtime? If you want a reliable blogging or picture hosting service, you should get your wallet out.

But while this kind of thinking might have held true in the past, it looks distinctly unfashionable in 2006, the year that Web 2.0 will be tested.

While some of you may be wary of Web 2.0's buzzword baggage, there's little argument that community-based services will play a massive part in the future of the Internet. And they will be more reliant than any previous tech service on the goodwill of their users, who are both their customers and their content creators.

Although most community services don't charge subscription fees for basic services, there is still an implicit contract between site and user. People pay for these services in time rather than money. And that contribution is the commodity that underpins so many of today's online firms, right up to giants like Yahoo and Google. They understand that they have to win that payment not once a year when the sub becomes due, but every time the user logs on.

This is good news for users, as it puts a massive premium on uptime and ease of use. An online service that wants to ride the Web 2.0 wave can't get away with the lack of usability of a typical CRM application, which is decoupled from its users by layers of management decision and huge multi-year contracts and business strategies.

But the enterprise sector is waking up to the potential of consumer technology and services. Even Gartner has noticed that many products aimed at the home user are much more usable than their enterprise alternatives. Tight budgets mean IT managers must look closely at consumer services. When they do, they'll find that such services are often better and more productive in many ways than paid-for options. They have to be.

Online services may be targeted at consumers today, but they are learning to give their users a level of uptime and support that puts the traditional IT sector to shame. When they take that to the enterprise, the online services revolution will be unstoppable.

Story URL: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/leader/0,1000002982,39245440,00.htm