by: Karl Long
Many conversations about interactive products and services come to the point of asking the question “but what if everyone uses that”, ususally reffering to the “free” aspect of a service, or the general priceing, or features etc.
Google – We could give away 1 gig of web space, eeek, but what if everyone uses that? We’ll go out of business
Flickr – We could give away a free account and let anyone upload 100 megs of photos a month, ahhh, but what if everyone uses that? We’ll go out of business
The better question is “what if no one uses it”, which is why snapfish, kodak, shutterfly etc. are all dying in the wake of flickr, because they focused on printing.
Mobhappy points to an interesting flickr fact, out of the 10 Million flickr users 80 people have ordered prints. So the better question is “but what if no one uses that”