Come to an End?

From time to time I share with groups to whom I present, usually the administrative groups, Jott. Grab your cell phone. Press the speed dial for Jott. Talk. Jott then transcribes your voice and sends a text message or email to the person you sent it to (might even be yourself, your spouse, your family). It can even send to groups–maybe your staff, or a department, or the leadership team. The service does many other nifty things as well, and the transcription is amazingly accurate. Aside from the phone call, Jott also offers several other quick and easy ways to interface with its service: the web, an application for your iPhone or BlackBerry, and a desktop dashboard.

But the free ride appears to be over.

After becoming very comfortable with a workflow that includes Jott, the service now is moving out of beta and is offering a tiered user plan: Jott Basic (free, but with ads and limited services), Jott ($3.95/month), Jott Pro ($12.95/month), and even pay as you go plans with longer transcription times. Current Jott users do get a 26% discount for their first year if they sign up for a year.

I've often said that free isn't a sustainable business model. I knew this service eventually would have to become fee-based. But it still stings.

As people become more and more comfy with "cloud computing," they will need to get more and more comfy with opening up their bank accounts to these services: $47.40 here, $24.95 there. This will not be just nickeling and diming you to death. The price point will be whatever the market will bear. The cloud does indeed have some significant things to offer, not the least of which is that you must pay your licensing fee or be dropped from the cloud to your more mundane terrestrial habitat. While many technology enthusiasts appear to be charging forward, embracing the cloud with enthusiastically open arms, I still remain highly skeptical of the cloud, for any number of compelling reasons–compelling to me any way. :o)

So, I don't know what I will do with my Jott account, which I have grown to love. Will we break up? Will we commit to each other? I have until September 8th to decide.

I came across this post over at lifehacker about other services, similar to Jott, that, as of this writing, remain free.