“Freemium has run its course”, Rags Srinivasan writing for GigaOM

“A small percentage of a very large number is indeed a large number, but can your startup stay solvent while you wait for the conversion to kick in? Freemium only offers the hope that non-paying users will fall in love with your product and start paying for it. Shooting an unlimited number of free bullets and hoping some will hit the target is a shotgun approach to monetization. It’s time to take a deliberate and targeted approach. Or as Vanek told me in our conversation, “it is time to retire the shotgun.”

Good post on the origin of the freemium model and argument why it has been fallen out of favor with some developers. Don’t skip the comments either.