revenue in a non intrusive manner?

@Astrophizz: I was making an example using the figures. It's the marginal difference between free and paid that wasn't enough to get people to pay.

You get 7.28GB for free and an additional 10GB is $20.  That's a big difference.  If 7.28GB was free and 7.5GB was $20 no one would buy it.  Similarly, if paying for Digsby meant you didn't need to click decline a few times while installing as was suggested in the previous post then people wouldn't pay just to have that. There needs to be a significant difference between the free and pay version.

mike wrote:

kviri, you say that like you're isntalling the program every other day... you shouldn't have to go through the installer more than once, and if you disable the research thing it's turned off. i don't see how you can 'grow weary'... either annoyed you as soon as you discovered it or you didn't. it's unclear to me how your opinion of this stuff is changing over time since you're not being continually exposed to it.

I am, in fact, running the installer more than once -- I run the client on three different machines, one of which is a development box (for work) that tends to get brainwiped and re-initialized when I transition from one project to another.  But that's every few months, at most.

The "weary" comment had more to do with the (perceived) recent flurry of new revenue-generating stuff (the research setting and the new installer hit in fairly quick succession), and the thought of more such items (including text ads) waiting in the wings -- though it now sounds like that's not as much of a near-future concern as I thought?

I'm also getting to the point where I'd like to start pointing other people I know at Digsby, to replace their current IM clients.  But some of the people I know are much more annoyed by click-through ads than I am, and I have no intention of making a Digsby recommendation to them until there's a paid (no ads, no on-by-default revenue stuff) version... if only because I don't feel like listening to them grumble about it.

steve wrote:

@kviri: I think if ads of any kind are ever introduced into the product (even the small text ads the people are suggesting) then there would be a paid pro version to get rid of them.

As long as you'll let me hold you to this later on, that promise alone goes a long way.  Thank you.

steve wrote:

However, If all you got for paying was an installer that you didn't have to click "decline" on a few times and a feature started disabled that you could disable anyway I don't think people would pay for that.

Fair enough.  Can we also get a commitment that future revenue features like the research setting will be disabled by default?  (Toss up a dialog box explaining why you'd like us to turn them on, if you like, but keep the default setting as "no".)  That was most of what irked me this last time.

steve wrote:

@overhaze: Definitely.  We're doing our best to come up with ways that don't annoy the user.  While most IM clients just take the easy route and plaster their product with banners, we're trying to come up with something better.

So you went with a method that has gone out of style back in the day of Kazaa?  Seriously how did you ever think that attempting to install malware was a good idea? All it does is create problems for you like is illustrated below with Mike's comment.  Like the old saying goes, "you are who you hang out with."  and in this case it means that digsby and freeze.com are going to be inseparable in the eye of the user.  Getting an install is based on trust.  When the first thing I see when I attempt and install of digsby is malware... how could I ever trust the installer to even continue any further than that.  You need to stop this ill-conceived "experiment" and link to the non malware installer on your homepage before any further damage is done.  The experiment was a massive failure.  Cut you losses and go back to the drawing board.

mike
the freeze.com software is what's marked as spyware, and what their TOS refers to. not digsby or the digsby installer.

I know some programs have put a search box in their program to presumably make money.  I have read that some search engines pay developers money to include a search box in their applications.  I thought I read that Google used to do this and they sill might, but I am not sure.  Why not do this in Digsby?  It would be a way to make money and it would be something useful for the user of your program.  Sounds like a win-win to me.

I think you give a choice.  The user can either pay, activate the CPU sharing (support Digsby option), or live with ads on the chat window (preferably text only).  Seems only fair.  There's no free lunch.

...which reminds me, how does one disable the CPU sharing that's currently rumored to be active in Digsby?

PS: Add LinkedIn to the pro version, LinkedIn users pay for LinkedIn. They can pay for Digsby supporting it too.

Steve, and dev's.  I agree with the ideas for keeping digsby free.  I like the grid computing format the most but, I would have ethical issues with supporting embryonic stem-cell research and the like. 

So being able to choose what research was done on our systems would make things acceptable.

There are a lot of users like myself who are on limited income, and as for myself I have MS and would love to see the research there or cancer.   

But also for many of us when  your after insurance cost for medications runs upwards of $1,500 montly purchasing yet another program or software makes it bad.

That is why many of us are Alpha/beta testers.  Just to try and help make Digsby the best free program out there.

So Steve and crew.  For those of us who are differently abled, or on limited income, thanks.

IF you will ever consider a paid version, what about protocol based payment. In a free version you have one protocol enabled and for every other protocol you want to use, you have to pay for it.
Dont know if this has been mentioned before, since i didnt read the whole thread.

Greetings from Germnay!

nah @langer hans, even Trillian gives you the basic-stuff for free - i don't think many would pay just to use icq and msn (or other combinations) together (which is the main reason to use an multi-IM-Client ). Since there are trillian, miranda, pidgin, meebo and so on, offering at least this option for free.

even more greetings from ol' germany

I, for one, would be quite willing to pay a modest fee for good software that didn't have a bunch of advertising in the installer and didn't do some sort of mysterious third party research with my CPU.

Two cents.

As I posted in the blog if Digsby adds ads like MSN and Yahoo has then someone will just create a patch to remove them. My idea, and I included this in a recent bug report, is to have an info bar at the top of the IM window like Trillian Astra has. It is a single line and would be used much the way the ad bar at the top of Gmail is used. Let users specify RSS/ATOM feeds to display entries from, the occasional digsby news and an advert every now and again (just not adverts for dodgy software/sites that Google allows these days).

I feel this would be very unintrusive, serve a function and allow Digsby to use an ad based revenue stream.

As to a pro version apart from being ad free the only other thing I can suggest would be to disable the email checking in the free version since this is a unique feature that Digsby offers but that might send a lot of free users away.

danilloOc wrote:

mike wrote:

it's not "collecting data", it's using your processor while you aren't. collecting data would be crawling your hard drive looking for... i don't know, something. in reality it's doing things like factoring primes and processing medical research data or something.

I don't think that use my processor or any other hardware/software in my in a personal computer without authorization make it any more acceptable in "privacy" terms do you? (I know it's a stupid example but...) Imagine someone enter your house and pick your car keys and use it to give a ride and then goes back and return you car, but of course only when "you're not using it", sounds bad doesn't it?

Anyways, it's all about opinions, I really don't agree with the sneaking methods the program is using and I respect the developers choice, I won't go around bashing Digsby cause I don't agree with the methods, no, but I won't indicate it to any friend either, I just won't use it anymore under this terms and hope you guys success with your project.

Except, instead of someone borrowing your car, they're borrowing your calculator, when you're not using it. If you care about that, then disable it.
Digsby has never forced you to do anything, and most users actually knew about these methods before LifeHacker needed to post something.

MRavMac wrote:

Steve, and dev's.  I agree with the ideas for keeping digsby free.  I like the grid computing format the most but, I would have ethical issues with supporting embryonic stem-cell research and the like. 
So being able to choose what research was done on our systems would make things acceptable.

I understand where you're coming from, sorta. If you add this, Digsby stops being and IM client.
The research is apparently prime numbers and medical research, at the moment.

The research module really is the most contentious thing right now. It needs to be an informed opt-in at the very least. It could also do with a better method for determining "idle" - I'd I'm watching a movie, transcoding video, performing a virus scan or defragging, I can go hours without touching the keyboard and mouse. That doesn't mean the computer's not in use, or that I want another process taking up cycles, especially if it's instructed to take up anything up to 75% of desktop CPU power.

The donation model's a good one - it costs next to nothing to implement and generates revenue, so what does the Digsby team lose by implementing it?

I don't see why anyone would object to making the ad-less version a paid product, but if that happens it needs to be stripped of all revenue-generating systems, including the research module. You're basically exchanging the ad revenue from that product for a lump sum. If people want the ad-less version without paying, they'll have to take their time opting out and disabling things manually. You're paying for convenience.

Custom branding - basically a paid-for skinning service. Pay 20 bucks, get the digsby mascot replaced by your company/group logo (with a small "powered by Digsby" tag at the bottom, maybe) and a colour scheme of your choice. Not likely to be very popular - but then again, that means you don't have to take too much time away from Digsby development.

I wouldn't object to small text ads at the bottom of the chat window. maybe these could be one of the things you can switch off in the "Support Digsby" menu?