Thoughts on yesterday's paid vs free visitor.js

The knowledge necessary to create visitor.js is almost at the level of a beginner. How many 'hello world' tutorials aren't there on the web that display how to use cookies in Javascript by showing the last time you visited the page?

The incentive behind creating something like visitor.js should be community, exposure and input from other developers. What was John's incentive behind releasing jQuery for free, a toolkit more useful, and harder, by far? *

I am not arguing against monetizing. I think monetization is most of the times appropriate, but when any Javascript coder worth his salt can copy your idea and implement it in 3 hours and you have no competitive edge, then monetization is not appropriate.

*: Addendum: John's incentive was probably not exposure, although it probably rocketed him towards being know as a Javascript authority.

Re: Thoughts on yesterday's paid vs free visitor.js

#5

Post by mikeocool » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 7:54 PM UTC

A fairly unique aspect of building software products for software developers is that most of your potential customers could probably build your product if they really wanted to. And as was illustrated yesterday, if the cost is of whack with the value created, software developers will just build their own version of it.

Twillio is a great example of the opposite. I don't think Twillio is actually so deep that people don't understand what's going on under the hood. Open source alternatives exist to using Twillio, like Asterisk. But setting them up and maintaining them is a massive time suck. The value Twillio creates is being able to make phone calls and send text messages immediately and never have to worry about that piece of your infrastructure. Additionally their pricing is set such that using them is over taking the time to setup something yourself is a no-brainer.

A nice side effect of making software for software developers, is that if you do open source something simple, someone else will find it when they're looking to save a few hours, and probably spend a little more time adjusting it to their needs and making it better. Then everyone is in a better position to use that code to build something that creates a lot of unique value and charge for it.

Re: Thoughts on yesterday's paid vs free visitor.js

#6

Post by latchkey » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 7:56 PM UTC

People who want the paid version, which probably comes with support as part of the package, will pay for that service. People who don't can just take advantage of the 'free' version. Even though the complexity of the code was low, there is value in offering a paid version, which usually comes in the form of support. Happens all the time.

Re: Thoughts on yesterday's paid vs free visitor.js

#7

Post by thehodge » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 7:56 PM UTC

I think Pusher is an excellent example of something which can be quite simple to setup and use (socket.io) but people are willing to pay if someone maks it really really easy and just plug and play.

I think if visitor.js came with some nice extra things to do with the data rather than just displaying it (country list with yours preselected, only showing social media buttons from the referring website).

I also believe the pricing for visitor.js was a little off-putting to people but not sure how you would price / rate limit a SaaS like that..

Re: Thoughts on yesterday's paid vs free visitor.js

#8

Post by heliostatic » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 7:59 PM UTC

I had a similar thought (http://words.bencohen.net/blog/2012/01/06/copy-for-the-peopl...) yesterday, and I wonder if we'll see the same sorts of issues as the fabrication of physical goods becomes easier for individuals.

Re: Thoughts on yesterday's paid vs free visitor.js

#9

Post by rsoto » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 8:00 PM UTC

I don't know what's all this about. Yes, someone open sourced a service that is providing an all-around solution for data that's easily trackable-- but the user's location.

If you've used free services to convert an IP to location, you know it's not so reliable. And that's the issue with the open-source version, which tracks me to the US, while I'm actually in Mexico City and it's quite accurate (12.8 kilometers off).

Yes, there's a geolocation API, but it needs user authorization and when you're building a service that requires knowing the user's location without them doing anything, visitor.js appears to be both reliable and at a fair-enough price.

Re: Thoughts on yesterday's paid vs free visitor.js

#10

Post by radicalbyte » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 8:01 PM UTC

relix wrote: post #4

Visitor.js is arguably not very innovative. The only "added value" that I would consider is having it all in one nice library. The knowledge necessary to create visitor.js is almost at the level of a beginner. How many 'hello world' tutorials aren't there on the web that display how to use cookies in Javascript by showing the last time you visited the page? The incentive behind creating something like visitor.js shou…

I built similar functionality into sites I built back in 1997 in PHP (and later in ASP). I.e. all of the things that you can get from the request (OS, referrer etc) plus a crude geolocation based on an IP lookup and a few heuristics (which worked pretty well for everyone except AOL users).

Seems like a foolish business plan (or maybe a business plan designed to profit from the foolish).

Then again I had the same reaction when I heard about Groupon's business model.......