Dig $ by: old and new word in monetization

Preface.

Some time ago I introduced habitrachitelI with the best IM-start of 2008 . In an interview, plans to monetize the product were somehow vaguely revealed. But after a few days an article appeared in the official blog that sheds light on this topic.

The plans voiced by the creators of Digsby, have caused a very mixed reaction of users and a real flurry of comments.

To avoid the effect of a bombshell, I allowed myself to bring the acquittal part of this publication to the beginning as a “disclaimer”.

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Conclusion

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Having started testing these profit schemes, we made one serious mistake. This post should have appeared earlier, when everything was just started, but not now. From the day of the first launch of Digsby, we remain a company focused on the user's needs. And we are proud of the level of customer support provided by us and the development process, which is almost entirely governed by feedback from our users. We try our best to maintain this reputation, as well as working hard to improve Digsby.
Due to the fact that the announcement was not made in advance, there was a misunderstanding that the company was hiding something. Although in reality we just did not want to raise the hype until there was a final decision to make these things integral parts of Digsby.
This was a PR error and the lesson learned. Like any young startup, we still have a lot of similar lessons ahead, but we will make every effort so that you can use a handy tool for communication.

Digsby is free and ad-free.

Since the first time we released Digsby to public beta testing, 8 amazing months have passed. To date, we have released about 41 builds and Digsby continues to improve. We received great reviews from our users and incredible reviews everywhere from LifeHacker to the Wall Street Journal .

We spent a lot of time telling you about the product in this blog and said almost nothing about the company. Well, here is a little bit of information. We are a startup, RIT alumni team from Rochester, NY. We hate the inefficiency of managing multiple accounts in IM, mail and social networks ... and so we created Digsby!

People often ask how we are going to make money if Digsby is free? After the public beta, we fully focused on correcting defects, adding new features and improving performance. Nevertheless, it is impossible to remain on the achieved, it is necessary to make Digsby even better! To this end, we would like to share with you the two profit making schemes that we are currently mastering.

Installer

We are currently testing a new installer that, during the installation process, brings to your attention other products, such as Yahoo Toolbar and the desktop weather app. The reason why this scheme is perfected is simple: in our opinion, it’s better to show you an advertisement once during the installation process than to stick banners all over the product, as is done in other IM clients (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ). We want to do everything so that Digsby remains free and free of advertising, and this is one of the ways to achieve the goal.

The new installer is different from the previous one, so it is necessary to explain exactly how it works. All offers that are shown are 100% optional . You do not need to install any of the advertised products, and none of them will be downloaded or installed if you have indicated that you do not want this.

The profit scheme is not unique - many people do this, including Java, DivX, CCleaner, Trillian, and so on. All mainstream IM clients also offer installation toolbars, as well as we offer the Yahoo Toolbar.

We tried to make the additional proposals as obvious as possible so that people would not set themselves by chance what they don’t want. You are in a completely understandable form provided with two buttons: “Accept” (“Accept”) and “Reject” (“Decline”). There is no focus with the “Next” button and masked checkboxes with already selected values. On the left you can see a list of all selected products that will be installed as a result.

The installer we use is TRUSTe certified. They check all products for viruses before we add them to the list of advertised ones. In addition, we provide a link to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for each product, along with clear instructions on how to remove it later.

Research module.

There are many research projects that require enormous computing power for their implementation. One of the ways to implement them is to run on a supercomputer . But there are several such computers all over the world and their rent costs a lot of money. Another option is to break the problem into many small pieces so that the fragments can be run in parallel on thousands and even hundreds of thousands of ordinary computers. This method is called “grid computing” (distributed computing).

Here are a few examples of well-known projects using grid computing: Cancer Aid , Search for Tropical Fever , Fight AIDS , Clean Energy . In addition to charitable projects, there are many commercial ones, such as drug research, economic forecasting, seismic analysis, etc.

Now, when we lifted the veil over distributed computing, let's see how it all relates to Digsby. We are testing a model that drives research for projects like the one above. It is activated at the moment when your computer is idle. Unlike the installer scheme, which is found in many products, this model is more unique. We would like to clarify what it does and how it works.

The special module is turned on after your computer is completely inactive for 5 minutes (there is no keyboard and muscle activity :)). The module instantly turns off if you just move the mouse or press a key. Thus, it should not affect the performance of the computer and uses its computing power only when the computer is not in use. In addition, the module is launched as a low priority process, so if any of your applications need CPU resources, it will receive them before the research module. Laptops use much less CPU processing power than desktops, and this happens only when connected to the power supply: if the laptop is battery powered, the module shuts down.

So what does he actually do? The module downloads a very small portion of the data and passes it through a mathematical algorithm to obtain the final result. Then this result is returned to the server and the next portion of data is downloaded. The process is repeated on thousands of computers to complete the computational task. All the data is stored in RAM, so your hard drive is not used. The module does not save anything on your computer at all and does not touch anything that would somehow identify your identity.

The idea is to turn this approach into a profit scheme and a feature! Some of the research centers of Digsby may be involved in charity projects (such as those mentioned above), and some of them are commercial ones that will help us keep Digsby completely free. Thus, the use of this module will allow us to keep our product free, and also give us the opportunity to contribute to research projects and thereby make the world a better place!

Finally, this module is also optional at 100% . You can disable it in the main menu by clicking on “Help”> “Support Digsby” and turning off the “Help Digsby Conduct Research” option. We have posted a link to this post in the site's FAQ and plan to add explanatory information to Digsby itself, as well as additional features, like statistics on the use of your CPU. "