December 11th, 2006
Jimmy Wales finds Web 2.0's price point: Free
Wanted: Computing services–storage, bandwidth, software and computing power. Price: Free.
If I offered you that deal your first response would be: "What's the catch?" Amazon is trying to charge for cloud computing services. Others are too. Now here comes Wikia and Jimmy Wales with a crazy idea: Give everything away. Bloggers who use Wikia's platform even get to keep all of the ad inventory and revenue.
From Wikia:
Wikia’s OpenServing extends the essence of the open source model – free software and content – to all aspects of web-based computing. The six pillars of Wikia’s OpenServing offering are: FREE software, FREE bandwidth, FREE storage, FREE computing power, FREE content over the Internet, and GIVING AWAY 100% of the ad inventory and revenue to bloggers and website owners who partner with Wikia. By tapping Wikia’s OpenServing utility, anyone can set up and maintain their own collaborative content project for news and opinions for free.
Wikia founder Jimmy Wales notes that "we don’t have all the business model answers, but we are confident – as we always have been – that the wisdom of our community will prevail.”
That wisdom of the community may mean bad news for anyone trying to sell Web 2.0-ish services. Typepad can't be too happy with Wales right now. Unless there's a big catch I'm missing, Wales may have found a new price point for Web 2.0 services–zero.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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