BTW, there is a music software product called Pitchcraft: http://www.bias-inc.com/products/masterPerfection...

No, sue me.

I think you are raising a good point but it also goes to the core of how you structure the product packaging and pricing. We stripped away add-ons last year and this simplified our operational issues, and provisioning, but the real impact was increasing customer satisfaction. Customers like a clear path to value.

Another point is that not all subscriptions are equal, annual and monthly subscriptions have some key variables related to the nature of the contract that can complicate the up/downgrade paths.

Zuora is a very solid offering and certainly lessens the challenges of subscription business models.

It's a good point, I've seen data that goes both ways so it's hard for me to offer a view on the efficacy of various trial periods. I would love to be able to A/B test that but I don't have access to the infrastructure to do that.

Don,
You have provided a good summary. IMO the key question revolves around retailers and the data here is not encouraging.

While admittedly anecdotal, if you speak with retailers who have run a Groupon promotion in the last 9 months you will find waning enthusiasm for the service. Many retailers I have spoken with point out that they went with Groupon on the premise of establishing an expanded base of repeat customers, only to find that the people who bought Groupon deals were one time buyers looking for a deal.

Interestingly, Groupon's own data reveals a related trend, which is declining revenue per subscriber in established markets. This engagement dimension was also revealed in their Risks section of the S-1, where Groupon admitted that their customer database a high degree of dupes and unverified customers.

I'm not one to subscribe to groupthink, in fact I am the consummate contrarian because I like to debate, but I also recognize that quite often groupthink is highly accurate for the same reason that Occam's Razor is a reliable theory, some things are obvious as a result of actual observation.

I won't offer a forecast on their IPO, but I do think a lot of really interesting negative comments are being raised right now that are worth paying attention to.

Hi Pete,
Charlie is right, invest the time to ensure you are COPPA compliant, it's becoming a pretty big issue.

not sure what happened to my post... I *fortunately* had a copy of it in Word because I wrote it on the train this morning, and was able to copy/paste it in. It's not exactly what I wrote the first go around but pretty close.

It seems pretty logical, according to Fish & Game the tranquilizer would not immediately and the animal could have attacked in the interim. I think there is another point that keeps getting missed here, this is an area with dense housing, there is nowhere for the animal to run to except another backyard.

Yes, the deer population is becoming unsustainable and one proven tactic for controlling it is opening up the area to hunting.

It wasn't fleeing, it was in a backyard of a dense residential area (there is one wildlife throughfare in this area where an underground water pipe (Hetch Hetchy) is located and it's a few blocks away. This animal had to transit through a lot of backyards.

This is probably the same mountain lion that has been triggering sightings and SMC alerts for the last few months, every other week on average (I get SMS messages). It's not PC but I'm glad it's gone, there is no space for mountain lions in these neighborhoods and I'm not apologetic about it either, I have no romantic notions about mountain lions in these parts.

For the record, it's not a fleeing mountain lion that concerns me... but one that familiarizes itself with residential neighborhoods in my immediate proximity does.

I am pretty excited about the potential for QR codes in advertising and promotions, even if not sold on them for personal information. I can also foresee companies using QR codes in a lot of innovative ways that defy prediction today.

Thanks for commenting.