Love the pricing part of the page (http://www.newsblur.com/):
Feed poor Shiloh -
Free Account: She goes hungry
Premium Account: Home cooked meals of green beans, sweet potatoes, carrots, and brown rice
Feed poor Shiloh -
Free Account: She goes hungry
Premium Account: Home cooked meals of green beans, sweet potatoes, carrots, and brown rice
And then it occurred to me that there could be a pricing model that doesn't scale linearly with number of users, but becomes (slightly) cheaper the more people use the service. I guess I've never seen the concept "economy of scale" applied to a web service as a whole.
In other words, "If we get over 10000 paid users by next year, the price will go down to $20 a year. If we get over 20000 by next year, the price will go down to $18 a year." Etc.
The cons: Shiloh gets less money in the short term.
The pros: Everyone has motivation to recommend the product to their friends. This might outweigh the loss of per-unit revenue.
Like I said, this is just idle thoughts, and there might be some way to game the system, but I just thought I'd throw it out there for your consideration.