Great post! I've been curious about this for some time now, and it's nice finally to see some numbers. My favorite iPhone app is a game called, Eliminate Pro. The reason that I mention it is because the game's developer, ngmoco took a big chance when it first debuted in the app store, by offering it for free. However, to make up for the lost app store revenue, they're instead relying completely on in-app purchases. From a player perspective it looks like it's been a success, but you might know otherwise. How does this business model stack up when compared with the standard app store one? Are other developers starting to experiment with similar strategies?

I guess my suggestion is realistic; http://www.hitlabnz.org/wiki/Video_-_AR_TankWar

Good prediction. I was thinking of some other games that might be fun with . Do you remember when role playing games were played on a table using painted miniatures (D& D, Warhammer40K) This could bring back tabletop role playing again. Back in a sec..... Apparently it's still played by some this way : http://www.wizards.com/dnd/default.aspx I like your virtual pet idea as well. Great post!

From what I can see, they ultimately end up following each other or they find people who are just trying to add followers by following everyone back. What I find ironic about this is they're not reaching their customers, and they just end up screaming at each other, except no one’s listening in this crowd. However, even if they were listening, they’re definitely not buying anything! It's a serious misunderstanding of Social Media, and I'm really glad you brought it up.

Sometimes I wonder if some startups even welcome the comparisons. This is especially true if it misrepresents their service. It's great for publicity, but it can also create disappointment and confusion when it finally opens to the public. Wolfram Alpha is a good example of this.

It’s too bad that the free model was the first one to catch on. I think it was ultimately deceptive to consumers to lead them to believe everything on the web would always be free. I’m also sure it has hurt many start-ups as well, who had no choice but to follow the model which was started by the deep pocket thinking of the large corporations and frivolous spending of the IPO fueled ones. Freemium seems to be the happy middle ground right now, and it’s the model I can live with the easiest. If everyone starts charging at the same time, it will be interesting to see which sites people deem the most valuable. It’s kind of shocking how quickly Disney and ABC gave up their own efforts and jumped on Hulu’s bandwagon. It seems like they never really gave their own efforts a chance. I can understand Disney’s move, but in my opinion ABC has the best service out of all the major networks. Good for Hulu! It does make it a more useful site now, and one I would consider paying for.
I often forget of don’t even realize which services are not available outside the US. I hope they find ways of opening their services to more users soon. There are far more web user’s outside the US now, then there are in it.

O.K., it gets better. I decide I'm going to ask them why they don't except Facebook connect for their own site, if it's good enough for everyone else's, and when I get back to their blog, I find out that they now support twitter too. Here's the link for that too. bit.ly/sIIa9 . Almost forgot, I watched the second video which I planned on doing after signing up and realized that they did make the candy taste nasty. That's really gross. Your kids are brave though. I thought maybe it was like cough syrup or something similar in the first video. No wonder the first company went out of business; there’s not much there to draw anyone back for the repurchase. Your kids might be the exception on this one. I think I’ll stick with my regular jelly beans for now

They didn't really make them taste bad did they? Cute kids, BTW. They must take after their Mom. Kidding of course....
...30 minutes later...
....Guess what? I have an Intense Debate account now. That was a lot of fun! I don't why I receive emails from them regarding comments I've made if I never had an account there, but at least I do now. BTW, they support Facebook connect now, but you need to add it yourself. Ironically, they don't allow people to sign up with it there. Here's the link http://blog.intensedebate.com/2009/07/01/intensed...

Have a very Happy 4th of July!!!