Anderson’s theory goes like this – create a free service that becomes wildly popular. Then, introduce a premium version of your service that 5% of your users are willing to pay for. The cost of providing free service to the other 95% of your users has to be so low that the 5% who pay cover the cost of providing the free and premium services combined, and allow you to make a profit in the processs.

In order for this plan to succeed, the premium, paid-for service needs to have the greatest reliability, highest quality and best human interface because the users are paying hard cash. The free service can be built to a lower standard because it’s free – and if it were just as good, why would people pay for it?

If only this were so.

The reality is somewhat counter-intuitive. It is the free service, not the paid service that needs to be designed to perfection.  Sure, the paid service should also be perfect as well, but ironically, paying users demand less. How is this possible?

The answer is that paying users have “bought in” and now they are in it for the long haul. It is because paying users have made an investment with their time and with their money, and therefore are committed to “making it work.” They will spend the time experimenting, getting tech support by phone, email or chat. They have the incentive to stay with the service because they paid for it.

So “free” cannot just be a synonym for half-baked. A free service has to be just as good as a paid offering, or even better, to keep users on board so it will grow virally. Getting users to buy in when a service is free can be as big a challenge as getting them to buy a service that is not free.

That makes me think. For about two years I have been contemplating buying an e-book reader. I read a lot – books, both fiction and non-fiction, news sources online and on paper, and lots of RSS feeds. Having an e-book would make a lot of sense for me.

Then, Amazon released their Kindle, and then their Kindle DX in Canada. I could have had a Sony E-Reader free from Air Miles. But I have been waiting – waiting for Apple’s rumored announcement. But why?

There’s a Chinese maxim that says the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, and the second-best time is right now. So why do we hold off on adopting life-changing technology?

Cost is a factor for sure. Nobody wants to drop big money on a gadget that will become obsolete days or months after you bought it, and then have to live with a day-old antique or replace it with the latest at additional cost.

But what about technologies that cost nothing, or even save you money, but require you to change your habits? How many times have you put off adopting one of those, switching email service providers, changing your browser, or switching to VoIP to save money on your phone service, even if it requires using a softphone on your computer instead of your landline?

What excuses do you give yourself? I don’t feel like changing, I’ll wait for the technology to be perfected, this is good enough, etc.

The best time to adapt to a new, life-improving technology was when it first came out. The second-best time is now.

Go out and see where there are improvements to the processes that you go by today. If smart people that you trust recommend it, go for the new thing. You can save time, save money, improve on skills and knowledge you have, and acquire new ones too.

Do not wait for the big announcement that waits around the corner, because there will always be another one after that.

You know, after January 27.

When I started the discussions with babyTEL about a position in sales, I did some research about SIP trunking services and tried to evaluate the opportunity. I had some questions to answer before I could accept this new challenge.  Could I make a living building a sales organization that would be selling SIP trunking services?? Is it going to fade away? And finally, if this technology is so great, why is it that the Tier 1 carriers I was working with were not selling it to their own customers. Why were customers not asking for SIP trunks? The answers came quickly.  Customers are not asking for SIP because they don’t know it exists or they have been told it was not a reliable service. Service providers are mostly interested in selling full T1s, MPLS links and high priced network connectivity services not low priced SIP trunking services… What is the incentive for them to offer SIP trunking or even talk about it to their customers? None. They don’t like selling plastic into a customer account because the margin is not high enough.  T1s, PRIs are cash cows for them… How will they position their new SIP services? I guess they will try to offer it on dedicated links like T1s and PRIs.

So what’s next? Well, customers need to hear that SIP trunking is reliable, that they can reduce their telephony costs by at least 40% and that it can coexist with traditional phone lines. But they need to turn it on!!  Resellers, agents and phone system manufacturers need to beef up their confidence in SIP trunking and think out of the box. Bold thinking is what fosters innovation. Coming out of recession this should be an easy pitch right? I’ll let you know in my next blog post…

But there’s something you just couldn’t do on the Internet – not in an easy or well-publicized way at any rate. A fundamental thing, and something that the babyTEL team, innovators in voice that we are, could not ignore – mainly because we wanted to do it!

What is this tantalizing Internet thing? The ability to send a voice message.

Crickets and tumbleweeds, right? You probably send voice messages every day, leaving voicemail for everyone who doesn’t pick up their phone. But there’s a distinction here – we wanted to be able to choose to send one of our contacts a voice message, not an IM, not an email, not call them up on the phone, just send them a message.

Why a voice message?  Voice is warm and authentic, and most importantly, you can get the message across not only by what you say, but how you say it. Even experienced professional writers have trouble connoting their tone in text. Your tone of voice, the way you say the words you speak, even the spaces between the words – those can deliver more of the message than the words you choose themselves.

Take this example. If I send my colleague an email that says “I am pleased to see that your work has improved” he can take it in any number of ways, influenced by his mood, his perception of his own work, his perception of me, and everything else.

He can read into it that I’m authentically impressed, a patronizing jerk, or anything in-between. But if he hears this message, it’s clear what I mean, and how I mean it.

That’s why when we began developing our Telephone application for Facebook, one of the first features was the ability to send a voice message to a friend, for occasions when how you say it matters as much as what you say.

It’s the feature we’ve been wanting for ages, so we decided to make it ourselves. We hope you’ll enjoy it too.