We talked about Google's venture into the corporate scene at here... where it is assumed that it would be much better off for Google to sell corporate edition softwares in a different way rather than via partnership with enterprise software vendors such as Cognos, SAS, SalesForce and etc.
To take things into perspective, let's study linkedin.
Linkedin provides free services for individual around the world to register professional profiles into a single platform. So how does it make money besides hoping for acquisition ?
Refer to the following two articles:
1. Linkedin expands into paid services.
2. Social networking startup turns a profit.
Therefore...
The first thing which linkedIN did was to collect as much user as possible.
Slowly and eventually, it introduces premium paid services...
- Corporate services
Big corporate has the ego to pay rather than benefiting from free services.
- Advertising
- Jobs posting
- Research services
- Advance search features
- etc
According to these reports, word of mouth is the best advertisement.
It is okay to introduce additional paid services while keeping the common services free as it was meant to be.
Take a look at Linkedin's investors, which consist of Sequioa Capital; key investor for Google.
Also take a look at their board of directors...
With that kind of support, they would have a lot of mouths to talk about it around Palo Alto; that is Silicon Valley.
To take things into perspective, let's study linkedin.
Linkedin provides free services for individual around the world to register professional profiles into a single platform. So how does it make money besides hoping for acquisition ?
Refer to the following two articles:
1. Linkedin expands into paid services.
2. Social networking startup turns a profit.
Therefore...
The first thing which linkedIN did was to collect as much user as possible.
Slowly and eventually, it introduces premium paid services...
- Corporate services
Big corporate has the ego to pay rather than benefiting from free services.
- Advertising
- Jobs posting
- Research services
- Advance search features
- etc
According to these reports, word of mouth is the best advertisement.
It is okay to introduce additional paid services while keeping the common services free as it was meant to be.
Take a look at Linkedin's investors, which consist of Sequioa Capital; key investor for Google.
Also take a look at their board of directors...
With that kind of support, they would have a lot of mouths to talk about it around Palo Alto; that is Silicon Valley.
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