Today was the day we were planning on introducing our pricing options for Poptiq. We had spent the better part of a month analyzing numbers and working towards a price when we realized we were going about it the wrong way. In this day and age of user generated, crowd sourced, and mass collaboration, it only made sense that we throw away our analysis and instead ask Poptiq users what what they think it’s worth.

Starting today, Poptiq users will receive a video in their carousel that asks them to tell us how they would like Poptiq to be priced.  Should Poptiq be a free ad-supported application, or should it be paid (and if so, how much)?  We’ll gather the feedback for two weeks, then publish the results along with pricing models that reflect what our user’s think it’s worth.  Until then we will continue to offer Poptiq as a free download so new users will have the opportunity to tell us what they think after they have used Poptiq (we send them the video a few days after they start using it).

For those in the industry, perhaps the most interesting and heavily debated aspect of this exercise is the question of how users feel about ad-supported services versus paid services. Industry experts like In-Stat, Convergence Consulting Group, and eMarketer have published research and forecasts for the online and download video markets looking at both ad-supported and paid services. The projections continue to evolve, with no clear winner in sight. The one thing that is for certain is the way people receive and watch video content is changing.

The issue of ad-supported services gets even more serious when the privacy question gets raised. Concerns over privacy and behavioral targeting have been brewing for years, most recently reaching the US congress where Google, Microsoft, facebook, and NebuAd were brought in to discuss their practices on advertising and user privacy. Opinions on how users themselves feel about providing personal and behavioral information in exchange for services on the internet seem to differ greatly. Research by eMarketer suggests consumers are worried about their privacy online - with almost 60% of users surveyed being uncomfortable with advertisers using their online behavior (history) to target ads. Yet Advertising.com in their user survey suggest 94% of users prefer ads over subscriptions (I’m not sure if they asked about possible privacy concerns) The Centre for Democracy and Technology also has online privacy in it’s sights. You only have to look at facebook’s initial launch of Beacon to see how thin the line is for some users.

Privacy aside, the business of ad-supported services remains unproven. Speculation over how successful Google is with monetizing YouTube through advertising is rampant. Yet it seems you can find examples in almost every industry attempting ad-supported models - games, books, video, music, and even food.

So we’re just as interested as everyone else is in knowing how users feel about advertising. Most importantly we want to know what Poptiq users think about our mobile video solution, and what they feel it is worth. If you are a Poptiq user, look for the ‘What’s Poptiq Worth’ video arriving in your carousel and express your opinion in the rating screen. If you’re not a Poptiq user, you have until Oct 8th to get Poptiq and express your point of view. Or you can let us know your thoughts by commenting on this post. Regardless, we want to hear your perspective.

We are living in a user generated, crowd sourced, and mass collaborating world - so stretch those fingers and participate!

Dave.

Poptiq is a now a week old and like that classic scene in Bambi, got up on four legs pretty quickly.  Sure, there was a few small issues but nothing so serious to stop us from welcoming aboard thousands of new users.  If you’re one of them, thanks for dropping by, much appreciated.

So now that we’ve got our confidence up and everything’s running smoothly we’ve decided to make Poptiq available to a few more people, adding most European countries to the list as well as New Zealand and Australia.  A shout out to all our new friends across the pond and in the Southern Hemisphere!

I need to introduce one of the key people behind Poptiq.  If this was the Enterprise, Andrew would be our Scotty.  Andrew is a serial entrepreneur with experience in both large and small organizations at a variety of levels.  I also think he’s a shape-shifter but I can’t prove it.  Known as a booster rocket for startups, he’s always tackled roles that allow him to be involved in hands-on development.  He still routinely blasts out large chunks of functionality in shorts periods of time much to the detriment of keyboards in the vicinity.  Often caffeinated, and usually immersed in some technical issue deep enough to have difficulty conversing with humans prior to decompression, Andrew brings a sense of humor to the workplace on alternate days.  I’ll expand on that last bit another time…

So this week we raise a glass to Andrew.  Great job!

Dave.

Wow, what a day.  It’s been fantastic.  For those of you who’ve started using Poptiq, thank you.  Please let us know how you like it.

For day one, things went pretty smoothly.  Seems like half of us were excited while the other half nervous.  I’ll give you one guess which half was the dev team :-)  We did have a few minor issues but we were able to take care of those pretty quickly.  If anyone is having problems beyond what’s covered in the FAQs and/or being discussed in the support forum don’t hesitate to send an email to support and we’ll do our best to get it sorted out.

Gotta go, there’s a cold beer calling my name…

Cheers!

Dave.

Hi!

Let me start by introducing myself.  I’m the CEO of Metranome, the company that created the Poptiq mobile video service for the iPhone and iPod touch.  I’d like to formally welcome you to our blog: what we hope will become a great venue for us to tell our story and I hope, hear your story.  I’m a pretty informal guy so this blog will stay on the casual side: who we are, what we do for fun, and the kind of day/week/month we’re having.  Hopefully you’ll share the same.

I must say that I am living the tech entrepreneur’s dream.  I get to work with some pretty freaking amazing people - those that are here creating Poptiq and those partners who are helping us along the way.  I get to hang out in a non-descript industrial building with a plastic factory on the other side of the cinderblock wall – we can hear the forklifts driving around, beeping away (I think sometimes we hear them racing). I get to work whenever I want (which is pretty much all the time) and get to be part of something new, exciting, and revolutionary. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

So for the past 8 or so months we’ve been working away on Poptiq, staying ‘under the radar’ and focused on building a great experience. While it might not be perfect, we think it’s good enough for prime time. There will be no perpetual beta here! We hope you are able to try it out, and if you do, be sure to give us your feedback. Regardless, please drop in every now and then and let us know how you are doing.

Later,

Dave.