As I told you recently, I discovered a new SocialBC Club, and it looked a bit strange to me, especially their hard pressing about "we've decided to switch to the probably first completely free Online Business Club. This is done now!"
There had to be something hidden behind the "Free Online Club"? And I think I found it: they SELL their Platform as a shielf-product!
From my point of view- why not?
It's just another good Business Model for Social Networking On-Line!
Could it work also for us? Looks quite similar to what we were discussing once about 2 years ago with Michael (MilanIN CTO), when in the beginning we had to make a decision about the platform for MilanIN.
We decided to take a working piece to start with from Open Source community, and then to share the results of our efforts with the whole world! Well, it's all good, but you'll ask me where is the Business Model here? :=)
First of all, MilanIN is not "another On-Line Community". We're "Real People- True Business!". Aboout the rest- you'll see it later!
Keywords: Alexander Dort, Business Model for Social Networking, FREE, FREE online club, Michael Tabolsky, Open Source, Social Networking, Social Networking Platform, SocialBC, WEB2.0toGO, Web2.0, berlios.de, eGroupWare, Andrey Golub
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Hi Andrey,
first thanks for your post about our club.
No there's nothing hidden "behind" the "FREE online club" and we're NOT use it to sell our WEB2.0toGO! Package because we'll stop this product this month!
Why?
Because this was only a quick-and-dirty test if one is able to sell such a product and we've decided to concentrate our mutual forces on the management of our FREE online club!
Why we sell it for free? Well we've discovered that this is exactly what the user is searching for! No user want to pay for contents on the internet as long as the real big players like Google, Yahoo, etc. are giving their services for FREE! All other thoughts are sugarcoated! ;)
Frightening? Not if you not build a business model on this base or you've found a model that will work without paid mamberships and that's what we do! ;)
Kind regards,
Alex
Posted by Alexander Dort ( Anonymous )/ on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 07:36
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Dear Alexander,
it's a pleasure for me to find in my Blog the comments from SocialBC founder!
Your reasonings look very logical to me and it's more or less what do we think here at MilanIN. Ok, I'll dedicate some time now and in the future to your project analysis, probably there could be found some good synergies for MilanIN and SocialBC...
in any case, my first opinion about SocialBC was that it's one of the best platforms! Also one of the goals for me was to present to MilanIN Members (and the other readers of this feed) your Club, I have nothing against healthy concurrency...
Thank you once again for your detailed and clear comments. Let's keep in touch!
Posted by Andrey Golub on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 14:17
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